– ‘Chinese to me’ –
Both Messi and his father, who has managed his son’s affairs since he was a child, have been charged with three counts of tax fraud.
Spanish prosecutors are seeking a jail sentence of 22-and-a-half months for them if they are found guilty, plus fines equivalent to the amount that was allegedly defrauded.
But any such sentence would likely be suspended as is common in Spain for first offences carrying a sentence of less than two years.
Messi and his father made a voluntary payment of 5.0 million euros ($5.6 million) – equal to the amount of the alleged unpaid taxes plus interest – in August 2013 after being formally investigated, which is expected to mitigate any sentence if they are found guilty.
The player’s former tax advisors told the court on Wednesday that the football star never handled his own wealth management and that they only dealt with Messi’s father.
“I always tried to make his life easy,” Jorge Horacio Messi told the court on Thursday when he took the stand just before his son.
“All of this was like basic Chinese to me, I did not understand anything. I asked (the advisors) to look after our assets…and they told us this was the best way.”
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