Neymar and Barcelona have been acquitted of fraud and corruption by a Spanish court after being accused of intentionally hiding the value of his transfer to the Catalan giants nine years ago.
Brazilian company DIS had accused Neymar, his father, and the former presidents of Santos and Barcelona of intentionally changing the cost of his 2013 transfer to avoid paying the company what it claimed was due as the partial holder of player rights.
But the court said in a statement on Tuesday morning that “it has not been proven that there was a false contract or that DIS was intended to be harmed."
The verdict is not a surprise following the decision by state prosecutors to drop all charges during the trial. That left only the lawyers of DIS to continue arguing their case.
DIS had initially sought a five-year prison sentence for the 30-year-old Neymar. But following the withdrawal of the state prosecutors, DIS’ lawyers reduced their demands to two-and-a-half years of prison.
They will now need to pay some of the legal costs associated with the case.
DIS claimed that it was owed 40 per cent of the transfer fee, initially understood to be £48.6m but later claimed to have been about £71m, and that led to prosecutors investigating the allegations.
The transfer was first investigated by tax authorities in Madrid in January 2014, leading to the resignation of then Barca chief Sandro Rosell amid a complaint from a club member. Barca then said that Neymar's parents got £34m of the £48.6m with the remainder going to Santos.
But further investigations were carried out to ascertain whether the club had hidden a portion of the fee for the purpose of tax avoidance and in January 2016 the club were ordered to pay £4.4m to the Spanish authorities.
“The agreement involves the recognition by the club of an error in tax planning for the signing of the player, for the fiscal years 2011 and 2013, when they did not correctly withhold payments resulting from his incorporation,” the club said in 2016.
But that did not end DIS’s complaints and prosecutors asked that Neymar be charged with two counts of fraud and corruption six years ago. The case had dragged on since with a trial finally slated to take place in October - only for state prosecutors to withdraw their complaints during proceedings.
In the past Neymar, who was represented in the trial by the legal firm Baker McKenzie, has said he was “sick and tired” of accusations around misappropriation and consistently protested his innocence.
