Rabat - The Barcelona Football Club released a statement on Monday that says the soccer organization "supports" the arguments presented by Lionel Messi’s family against the findings of the international team of journalists that simultaneously released articles on the contents of the Panama Papers - a nearly complete set of almost 40 years worth of financial documents, emails, and other files from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm.
Rabat – The Barcelona Football Club released a statement on Monday that says the soccer organization “supports” the arguments presented by Lionel Messi’s family against the findings of the international team of journalists that simultaneously released articles on the contents of the Panama Papers – a nearly complete set of almost 40 years worth of financial documents, emails, and other files from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm.
“Since the very first moment that the ‘Panama papers’, which accuse Leo Messi, were released, FC Barcelona has sent its affection and support to the player and to his whole family,” the statement read. “The Club makes all of its judicial means, fiscal and administrative, at the family’s disposal in order to make his actions and honour clear in this case.”
Messi is currently being prosecuted for tax fraud by the Spanish government after the Hacienda tax office alleged in 2013 that the World Player of the Year and his father, Jorge, defrauded the country of £3.15 million in taxes from 2007 to 2009. The case will be heard in a Barcelona court between May 31 and June 3.
According to the Spanish prosecutor’s office, revenue was hidden using offshore shell companies in Uruguay, Belize, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in order to avoid paying the required taxes.
Monday morning, Messi’s family released a joint statement denying any wrongdoing in regards to Mega Star Enterprises – a company listed under Lionel and his father’s name in some of the 11.5 million files in the Panama Papers, according to a report released by the Spanish news site El Confidential on Sunday.
“In response to the news released by various media outlets in which Lionel Messi is held responsible for the forming of a company with the aim of ‘putting in place a new web of tax fraud’, the Messi family wishes to make it clear that Lionel Messi has not carried out any of the actions he is accused of; the accusations of having created a new web of tax fraud and, even, money laundering, are false and libellous,” the statement read.
The family also says in the statement that the company in question “never held open accounts or funds” owned by Messi and that the entity was created by the celebrated soccer star’s previous financial advisors. All of the funds managed by the former advisors have been declared before the Spanish Treasury, the family maintains.
