Ben Yedder, sentenced to six months in prison for tax fraud

Former French-Tunisian football player of Sevilla Wissam Ben Yedder, today in Monaco, France, he was sentenced to six months and one day in prison and the payment of a fine of 133,798.70 euros by the Provincial Court of Seville for a crime against the public treasuryjudicial sources reported on Tuesday.

The sentence, which was brought by an agreement between the parties — the prosecution, the private state attorney’s office and the former player’s defense — was terminated on the condition that Ben Yedder within two years, he does not commit a criminal offense again and, according to sources, there is no sentence about civil liability “after the defendant has complied”.

The judges consider it proven that the convict signed a work contract as a professional soccer player with Sevilla in 2016, which remained in force during 2017, “so he was obliged to submit an appropriate income tax return.”

The accused, according to sources, “did not submit the statement on time” despite “knowing his obligation” to do so and “including in it all his income”, the earnings from work paid by Sevilla in cash, in kind for payment to “the person who brokered his signing”, and the interest paid in accounts as income from movable capital and those from “using the right to their image”.

The court adds that, since the procedure for verifying the statement began in January 2019 and that the defendant was obliged to give a statement, he “did not do that either”, and only in March of that year, when the verification procedure was limited, ” when the convicted person presented a self-assessment with a result of 225,323.25 euros, the amount he actually paid.”

In the given statement, the defendant “deliberately falsified by not including the received interest as income on three accounts owned by him, which amounted to a total of 1,623.34 euros”, according to the sources. The court in Seville adds that the defendant “also did not declare as income from economic activities those received” from the sponsorship contract between the sports brand and the entity owned by the defendant as the sole partner.

The sources specify that this entity “does not have evidence that he transferred the right to use his image, but, on the contrary, he founded it with the sole purpose of hiding said income and not paying taxes on it.” According to the court, the income received in 2017 for this concept was 79,429 euros.

The court also indicates that “the income that was omitted in the presented report established that the fee to be paid is 267,597.40 euros, instead of the self-determined and paid one”, noting that later the defendant entered 51,007.41 euros in the Tax Administration, which corresponds to the unpaid fee with the associated interest.