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Revealed: Lionel Messi and his father in new alleged tax scam

September 19, 2019 By Yann Philippin, Begoña Perez Ramírez (Infolibre) and EIC

Documents obtained from the whistleblowing platform Football Leaks reveal a financial structure that Spanish tax authorities suspect was used to hide part of the remunerations paid to FC Barcelona star player Lionel Messi, already convicted of tax fraud in 2016 along with his father Jorge Messi. The documents detail how the latter received 6.7 million euros from the Catalan club via a Luxembourg bank account belonging to a shell company registered in London.

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Football superstars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, both of them five-time winners of the coveted Ballon d’Or (Golden Ball) award, share more in common than their exceptional sporting talents which have earned them the rank, in Forbes magazine, as the two highest-paid athletes in the world.

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