Lionel Messi Faces Legal Action For £3.4m Tax Fraud In Spain

Barcelona star Lionel Messi has been accused of defrauding £3.4million through false income tax returns in Spain. The state prosecutor has taken action against the footballer and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi.

Both are accused of three offences against the public purse for allegedly defrauding millions on income tax returns for 2007, 2008 and 2009, saying it related to supplementary earnings Messi raked in on image rights.

The complaint, signed by prosecutor Raquel Amado, was submitted for trial at the court in Gava, the upmarket Barcelona suburb where the Argentina forward lives. A judge must accept the prosecutor's lawsuit before charges can be brought against Messi and his father.

The football star released a statement denying any wrongdoing.

"We are surprised," Messi said on his Facebook account on Wednesday, "because we have never committed any infringement. We have always fulfilled all our tax obligations, following the advice of our tax consultants who will take care of clarifying this situation."

Amado alleged that Messi's father claimed his son's image rights were ceded to companies in tax havens like Uruguay and Belize "in order to avoid paying taxes in Spain." The prosecutor said such image rights over the three-year period "have hardly been taxed at all… Relevant information has been omitted from their tax declarations with the objective of preventing the tax authorities from knowing about the ceding of these image rights to overseas companies."