'InfoLibre': Courtois used companies in Luxembourg and Malta to pay less at Chelsea

The InfoLibre portal, a member of the EIC, a European investigative journalism network, continues with its disclosure of the latest documents obtained by Football Leaks. In this case they speak of Courtois. According to these documents, the goalkeeper converted the income he received from Chelsea and Nike in a Grand Duchy company into bonds of a Maltese company to pay less until the British Treasury stopped him. On the other hand, its agent, Christophe Henrotay, according to the documents provided, has set up a complex network of companies to avoid paying taxes that includes the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands and the Seychelles. These documents also reveal that he charged two million euros in commission for the transfer of the goalkeeper to Madrid.

“On September 22, 2018”, narrates InfoLibre, “Real Madrid CEO José Ángel Sánchez Periáñez receives an email from Belgian sports agent Christophe Henrotay in his inbox. An email with the revealing title Invoice Handover Thibaut Courtois. The content of the email is as concise as it is illustrative: it is an invoice in which the agent asks Real Madrid for two million euros as a fee or commission for having managed the signing of goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois. Sánchez immediately forwards the request to one of his employees with the message: “Please fix this.” Belgian Courtois had been transferred to Real Madrid a few weeks earlier for 40 million euros from Chelsea in London. A transfer of the highest level, for which Henrotay wants to pocket his commission of 5% as soon as possible ”.

Documents provided by Football Leaks and revealed by InfoLibre also demonstrate how the Belgian agent collaborated in the design of the double structure with which the now Real Madrid goalkeeper reduced taxation to almost zero for their image rights.

“The way in which Henrotay eludes the treasury”, unveils InfoLibre, “It is shown in another Football Leaks document: an email from Christophe Henrotay to the general manager of English club Chelsea FC, Robert Hamblin. Copied to Thierry Courtois, Thibaut's father, who works for the goalkeeper's agent. In that August 2018 email, Christophe Henrotay asks Chelsea to stop paying the image rights of Thibaut Courtois abroad to the Luxembourg company Global Image SA, 'due to a problem with the HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs , the British Tax Agency) '. ”.

Infolibre continues: “The mail has been marked as 'high urgency' because there is a lot of money at stake. No less than 960,000 pounds (1.1 million euros) in image rights for the 2017/2018 season. Part of Chelsea himself, part of Nike ”.

“In principle, a footballer playing in the UK can collect image rights through two companies. A British one that receives 20% and a foreign one that enters the remaining 80%. Many Belgian footballers took the opportunity and chose Luxembourg to create a society in the Grand Duchy with which to collect that 80%. Thanks to a tax ruling – fiscal agreement – between the Premier League clubs and Luxembourg that allowed 80% of the amounts sent to the Duchy to be exempt from tax, while the remaining 20% ​​was taxed at 29%, in practice, taxation was reduced to 5.2% on all income from image rights ”, the information portal Infolibre concludes.