Dani Alves will be able to leave prison 14 months later. The Barcelona Court has decreed bail of one million euros for the footballer by partially upholding the appeal of his defense lawyer, Inés Guardiola. The court imposes the withdrawal of his passport, both the Spanish and the Brazilian, prohibits him from leaving Spain and forces him to appear weekly in court. In addition, it establishes the prohibition of approaching less than one kilometer from the victim as well as “communicating with her by any means or procedure.” In this way, the former FC Barcelona footballer will remain free until the sentence is final.
The court has assessed that the sentence of 4 and a half years in prison that was imposed “has been significantly reduced in relation to the lower sentence requested by the Prosecutor’s Office of 9 years and twelve by the private prosecution” with which ” leads to the conclusion that the risk of flight linked to the severity of the sentence has at this time been reduced. The only doubt that arises in the court is the roots with Brazil where she has her children and her friends and which may cause doubt that she will not escape. For this reason, he considers that with the withdrawal of the passport and the obligation to appear weekly before the court, the risk of escape is reduced and “the legal mandate” that there is no less burdensome means with which it can be obtained is fulfilled. the purpose of not escaping.
Furthermore, the court maintains that at most the preventive detention could be extended up to half of the sentence, making it difficult for a final sentence to arrive sooner. Although Alves has maintained throughout the procedure that he has all his funds immobilized due to a judicial dispute that he is having open with his ex-wife in Brazil, the court considers that since he is an elite footballer, he will be able to obtain the money to pay the bail and remember that he has won several battles with the Treasury that must return a total of 7 million euros.
The court’s decision, however, has not been unanimous and the reporting magistrate has issued a dissenting vote disagreeing with Alves’ freedom. In his letter, he is in favor of keeping the footballer imprisoned for as long as possible considering that there is already a conviction and that the appeal presented for the accusations may be successful and the sentence may be increased. “It would be alarming if, having established in the first instance that the accused has committed a crime of rape, despite the sentence not being final, he remained free without applying the legal margin that allows the extension of provisional detention, especially when in his situation “As a provisional prisoner, he is not subject to any rehabilitation treatment, with the more than obvious consequences that could result in a possible repetition of the crime as the deficits that led him to commit the crime are not corrected.”
The risk of flight “has increased with the issuance of the pronouncement
conviction and the possibility that said sentence could be increased in the appeal court, following the appeals formulated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the private accusation,” maintains the magistrate. his surroundings
personal, family and friends, the latter with high purchasing power. The above leads to the conclusion that the establishment of a deposit is not
obstacle for the accused to have an interest in leaving Spain and
go to Brazil, a country that does not extradite its nationals except naturalized ones
(Article 5.LI of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988), or to any other country without
extradition treaty.
make viable the possibility of considering that they could facilitate being able to
abandon the national territory to escape the action of justice,
even giving up the million euros that can be deposited.
