Soccer Star Lionel Messi and His Dad Are Going To Jail for Tax Fraud
Face it, there's never THAT MUCH interesting news in the soccer world. It's too global to really keep up with "hot topics" and "current events" and understand what's going on. Today is a different story. It seems that Spanish soccer star Lionel Messi has been sentenced to 21 months of jail time for evading taxes on over $4 million worth of income.
Per ESPN FC:
A Barcelona court has found Barcelona forward Lionel Messi, and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, guilty of three counts of tax fraud and has sentenced them to 21 months in prison -- although neither is likely to serve any jail time.
In a statement, the court also said that the sentence can be appealed through the Spanish supreme court. Under Spanish law, a tax prison sentence under two years can be served under probation, meaning Messi and his father are very unlikely to go to jail.
The court has also ordered Messi to pay a fine of about €2 million ($2.2 million), while his father was dealt a €1.5m fine for the tax evasion.
I'm no expert on Spanish Law, or American Law for that matter, but I do think that this basically says, "Lionel Messi was sentenced to 21 years of non-jail jail time and actually just won't go to jail at all." Reading into it more, it seems that if your sentence is less than 2 years, you can serve it with probation instead of actually being locked up.
The court ordered a $2 Million fine, but in the grand scheme of things, does this really affect him? Athlete privilege prevails once again!
