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Full text written by David Peña at iusport.com

This last week it has been Marcelo (Real Madrid soccer player) who will reach an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office so that a sentence is issued in which he is declared guilty of a tax offense for the 2013 exercise of the Income Tax of Physical Persons ( I.R.P.F). Not long ago the agreement was reached by Mascherano (soccer player, former FC Barcelona).

It seems that the exemplary sentence -undeserved- that fell on Messi (FC Barcelona footballer) has curbed the spirits of many footballers who, when threatened by a criminal trial for alleged tax offence, prefer to assume guilt and plead guilty and thus way to avoid the oral trial and thus see how the Prosecutor's Office and the State Attorney's Office considerably lower their punitive claims.

When I write about the undeserved condemnation of Messi, I do so with the utmost respect for both the Judgment of the Barcelona Provincial Court and that of the Supreme Court, but that respect does not force me to assume the thesis of deliberate ignorance.

In my opinion, the FC Barcelona footballer was never in control of the fact that could make him the perpetrator of the crime of fraud against the Tax Agency, since the player, barely 18 years old when the complex plot of assignment of his image rights to several commercial companies based outside the territory of the Kingdom of Spain, it is almost impossible that he had sufficient knowledge to orchestrate such a business circuit. In addition, the tax crime requires a specific fraud intended to try to avoid tax obligations, and the reverse of the fraud is the error of prohibition.

In this same sense Mascherano or Marcelo can hardly know the difference between the I.R.P.F. or the Corporation Tax (I.S.), or if a certain amount must be taxed by one or another tax, since they are technical issues that athletes are unaware of, since they do not have technical tax legal training in this regard.

Let us not lose sight of the Penal Code in art. 305 typifies the action of evading the payment of taxes, and that when an athlete pays his image rights by a commercial company, if the commercial contracts are correctly executed according to current legislation, the taxation outside the I.R.P.F. there is no reason for it to be valued by the State Attorney, or the Prosecutor's Office or the courts or tribunals as "avoiding the payment of taxes".

If the athlete has been taxed by the I.S. he does not do it to avoid payment, rather he does it because his advisers advise him to do so.

Finally, it is good to analyze the reasons why the advisers of the athletes who are immersed in these problems of a criminal jurisdictional order are not prosecuted, since, since it is a fiscal crime, without a doubt, the tax advisers should, at a minimum, give the pertinent explanations before courts and tribunals to see if the athletes are really the perpetrators of these crimes or, on the contrary, it is the advisors who decide technically instead of the athletes.

In our opinion, a dose of greater professional courage on the part of the advisors would be advisable to assume responsibilities and not leave the athletes alone in the face of danger, who are not responsible for many of the legal messes in which they are immersed .

VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH DAVID PEÑA I NOFUENTES ABOUT MESSI'S TAX CASE.