20th May 2025
Madrid News Main News

Spain taxman knocks 2m euros off Ronaldo tax settlement

After ordering football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo to pay 18.8m euros to settle a tax fraud claim, Spanish authorities have reduced the sum by two million euros, the El Mundo daily reported Friday.

Spain’s taxman and Ronaldo’s advisors made the deal to settle claims that the 33-year-old, who has since moved to Italy’s Juventus, hid income generated from  image rights while he was playing for Real Madrid.

Cristiano Ronaldo, who was Real Madrid’s leading all-time goalscorer (Photo by Angel Martinez, RealMadrid.com)

The agreement also includes a two-year jail sentence which he won’t serve. Sentences of up to two years are generally not enforced in Spain for first-time offenders in non-violent crimes.

According to El Mundo, who had access to documents of the settlement, tax authorities realised he paid two million euros too much last year for image rights he sold in 2014. That means he only has to pay 16.7m euros, the report said. It added that Ronaldo has already paid 13.4m euros. Spain’s finance ministry would not comment on the report.

The newspaper said the tax agreement also means that the court near Madrid investigating the case had dropped charges against Ronaldo’s agent, Jorge Mendes. The court was not immediately available for comment.

Had the case gone further, without the player offering a settlement, Ronaldo could have faced a reported fine of 28m euros and a three-and-a-half-year jail term, according to the Spanish tax office union Gestha.

Ronaldo’s big rival, Barcelona’s Argentinian star Lionel Messi, paid a 2m euro fine in 2016 in his own tax wrangle and received a 21-month jail term. The prison sentence was later reduced to a further fine of 252,000 euros equivalent to 400 euros a day of the original term.

Recent Posts

British Embassy yet again urges residents to get a TIE card – ‘especially those in Alicante and Malaga’

News Desk

Telefónica’s ‘upgrade works’ leave Spanish regions without 112 emergency line

News Desk

Pedro Sánchez: ‘Israel should not be allowed to compete in the Eurovision’

News Desk

EU and UK ‘reset’ post-Brexit relations with new agreements at mini-summit

News Desk

Spain orders Airbnb to remove over 65,000 ‘illegal’ holiday rental listings

News Desk

Spain’s national broadcaster defies Eurovision organisers, and airs support message for Palestine

News Desk

Leave a Comment