The former president of FC Barcelona Sandro Rosell learned this Wednesday from the press that the prosecution accused him of a tax offense, as happened in May 2017 when he was arrested, that the cameras reached his home before the judicial police.
The prosecution’s accusation is for tax fraud of an amount already paid and paid in 2019, after learning that the Public Treasury was claiming that amount.
In fact, even the prosecution in its indictment, to which neither Rosell nor his lawyer, Pau Molins, has yet been able to have access, contemplates an extenuating circumstance for the payment paid in 2019.
In the majority of cases like this, with some of them quite media recently, the prosecution, in coherence with this concession of the mitigating factor, usually asks for symbolic prison sentences of approximately six months, which is why the high request in this case of 2 years and 9 months.
All legally declared in its day
The bottom line lies in the amounts that Rosell charged for advice on sports marketing. At that time he collected them through his personal company and declared them in full by that means, but the public treasury interprets that he should have done it through personal income tax and not through Corporation Tax, for which he claimed the unsatisfied difference. Rosell, upon learning of this claim from the Treasury, paid what was asked of him and the default interest, in 2019, but in no case was there any concealment since all the money received was declared on time.
Another surprising element is that in cases of discrepancy due to differences in criteria, they are usually carried out through taxation and not through criminal proceedings.
Now we will have to wait for what the judge decides and if she decrees the opening of an oral trial, and if so, Rosell will go to trial again to defend his position and achieve reason again, as it already happened in the case that had him 22 months in preventive detention to be acquitted later.
It should be remembered that Sandro Rosell has sued Judge Carmen Lamela and the State for those events.