{"id":38864,"date":"2013-06-13T12:06:28","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T09:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=38864"},"modified":"2013-06-13T12:06:28","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T09:06:28","slug":"is-lionel-messi-a-tax-fraud-in-spain-barcelona-news-38864","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/is-lionel-messi-a-tax-fraud-in-spain-barcelona-news-38864\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Lionel Messi a Tax fraud in Spain ? \/ Barcelona News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FC<\/a><\/h1>\n

Barcelona footballer Lionel Messi has been accused by prosecutors in Spain of failing to pay 4m euros (\u00a33.4m) in income tax.<\/h1>\n

The Argentinian international and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, allegedly submitted fraudulent tax returns for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.<\/p>\n

In a statement posted on his Facebook page, the striker has denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

“We have just (heard) through the media about the claim filed by the Spanish tax authorities,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

“We are surprised about (this) because we have never committed any infringement.<\/p>\n

“We have always fulfilled all our tax obligations (and are) following the advice of our tax consultants who will take care of clarifying this situation.”<\/p>\n

A complaint, signed by state prosecutor Raquel Amado and submitted for trial at a court in Gava, must be accepted by a judge before any charges can be brought.<\/p>\n

Lionel Messi, who was named the best player in the world for four consecutive seasons, is one of the highest-paid sportsmen.<\/p>\n

He commands an annual salary of $20m (\u00a313m) and pulls in around $21m (\u00a313.4m) in endorsements from sponsors including Adidas, PepsiCo and P&G, according to Forbes magazine.<\/p>\n

Messi is on a short break after playing the final 30 minutes of Argentina’s World Cup qualifier against Ecuador in Quito.<\/p>\n

Alejandro Sabella, the coach of the national side, previously said he expects to include the 25-year-old in the line-up for a friendly against Guatemala on Friday.<\/p>\n

Barcelona declined to comment on the claims.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barcelona footballer Lionel Messi has been accused by prosecutors in Spain of failing to pay 4m euros (\u00a33.4m) in income tax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,17,1,118,34,14],"tags":[2052,53318,5664,53315,53317,53314,53316],"class_list":["post-38864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-hot","category-latin-america","category-world","tag-barcelona","tag-income-tax-spain-messi","tag-lionel-messi","tag-lionel-messi-tax-fraud","tag-messi-accused-failing-tax","tag-messi-tax","tag-spain-tax-messi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}