Lionel Messi and his father shell out €5m in tax fraud case

Messi pictured during an Argentina training session

Spanish authorities have received five million euros from Barcelona ace Lionel Messi and his father Jorge following accusations of the duo falsifying tax returns, a Spanish court said on Wednesday, Yahoo Sports reports.

A “corrective payment” of 5,016,542.27 euros was transferred by the pair last month, according to a court in Gava near Barcelona.

Messi and his father were set to appear at a hearing on September 17, but the pair’s lawyer had requested for the hearing to be postponed due to the player having another engagement that day, the statement added.

The Argentinian International and his father had disacknowledged any accusations of them hiding over four million euros by filing incomplete returns during the years 2006 to 2009.

The marketing of Messi’s image rights was concealed using a convoluted system of umbrella corporations in Uruguay, Belize, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, the prosecutor’s office for tax crimes in Catalonia said.

“I never take care of that stuff myself and neither does my father,” the World Player Of The Year said in July.

“We have our lawyers and our wealth managers to take care of that and we trust them and they will sort this out,” he added.

“The truth is that I don’t have a clue about all this and that is why we have people taking care of it.”

The 26-year-old has been residing in Barcelona since 2000 and obtained Spanish citizenship in the year 2005.

Messi is ranked no.10 on Forbes’s list of top-earning athletes.