The Barcelona Court sentenced Dani Alves to four and a half years in prison on Thursday as responsible for the sexual assault of a 23-year-old woman in the toilet of a reservation at the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona, ??in December 2022. While his lawyer, Inés Guardiola, communicated the sentence to the footballer in the dungeons of the Palau de Justice, not far away, the BDO office where his tax lawyer, Fernando Mota Bosch, works, received another sentence linked to the player that proves him right and which obliges the Treasury to return 1.2 million euros.
In the sentence, to which La Vanguardia has had access, issued by the fourth section of the administrative contentious room of the National Court, the court considers the appeal presented by the footballer against the process opened by the Treasury for the payment of services from a FIFA agent. With the new ruling, the Treasury must return a total of 9.2 million euros to Dani Alves.
The Brazilian’s tax lawyers are insisting to the Tax Agency that it proceed to execute the payment and that it can dispose of the money to present it as a guarantee of bail to claim his immediate provisional release, until the sentence for sexual assault is firm
On Thursday itself, when the sentence of section 21 of the Barcelona Court was made public, Inés Guardiola already assured her intention to appeal against the text. And something else. In the coming days, he will request the release of Alves, pending the resolution of the various appeals that the parties will present.
Guardiola and his team understand that with the sentence handed down, – lower than the 9 and 12 year sentences he was facing – the high risk of escape has disappeared and to ensure this they will offer part of the money owed to him by the Treasury as a guarantee that he will not run away. But for that, he must first have the money.
Alves also has no record, he has an address in Esplugues de Llobregat and handed in his passport after being arrested on January 20 last year, the day he entered prison. Some elements that in Guardiola’s opinion are compatible with his provisional release.
Since his arrest for the rape complaint, Dani Alves has had all his accounts frozen and has not been able to access their funds. A dispute with his ex-wife Dinorah Santana over the pension of his two children resulted in a judicial process in Brazil which entailed the seizure of all his capital and the impossibility of disposing of the money. For this reason, he had to turn to the father of his friend Neymar to face the payment of the 150,000 euros of civil liability that the court demanded from him during the investigation and which served as a mitigating factor to reduce his sentence.
In this new legal dispute, the National Court has ruled in favor of the footballer because he understands that he did not have to declare the remuneration that FC Barcelona paid to FIFA agent Joaquín Macanás during the 2013-2014 financial year. The Central Administrative Economic Court considered that Alves had to declare the remuneration that Barça paid to the FIFA agent for his intermediation to convince the player to renew for the Blaugrana club. These payments were made by Barça to the agent without the defender’s knowledge. The tax office thought that the one who benefited from that negotiation was the footballer and that, therefore, the amount charged by the agent should be imputed to the Brazilian as income from the work. The player’s defense argued that the agent was acting in favor of the club and not Alves, and the court has now proved him right. He believes that the Treasury disregards in its analysis “the legal business” between the club and the agent and places it in “a parallel business scheme”, which is the representation contract between the player and the agent.
In the other five judgments in which the justice has also ruled in favor of Dani Alves, they established that the footballer correctly liquidated his image rights while he was a FC Barcelona footballer.
In the trial for rape, the defense specifically asked Alves about the lack of financial availability he had at the time. Another element that Guardiola will use to defend that there is no longer any risk of escape. At the time, the lawyer Cristobal Martell proposed in one of his requests for freedom, in addition to the weekly or daily signature in judicial or police offices, that he be fitted with a telematic bracelet that would guarantee his commitment to the justice
