Neymar avoids charges for tax evasion in Brazil concerning payments from Barça

Paris Saint-Germain striker Neymar managed to dismiss a case in a Brazilian court and now he cannot be "prosecuted or detained" for tax evasion in his country, in the framework of two tax actions, his counsel has informed. The Regional Federal Court of the 3rd Region of Brazil has determined the suspension of an "investigative criminal proceeding" in which the Prosecutor's Office was proposing an agreement to avoid putting him in the stand.

However, the court considered that there is not enough evidence for the Public Prosecutor's Office to offer a deal. "It would be markedly authoritarian to threaten with Criminal Law one who exercises his elementary constitutional right to pay everything when due, but only when due," alleged the soccer player's defense in a note, represented by the Davi Tangerino Advogados law firm.

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In the Brazilian case, Neymar is accused of tax evasion for not declaring his taxes correctly and, therefore, not paying the corresponding tax fees concerning some payments that he and his family received from Barcelona between 2011 and 2013, when he was still a Santos player.

The Brazilian tax authorities fined him 188 million reais (today about US$36 million), which the soccer player managed to reduce considerably through a series of appeals in judicial instances. In May 2020, he also obtained an injunction that allowed him to suspend payment of the fine until the case was tried. Neymar's defense alleges that a large part of the money demanded by the Brazilian authorities was paid in Spain, while he was playing for Barcelona, through the payment of taxes in that country, the values of which should be subtracted from the fine.

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After the dismissal in court, his lawyers insisted that there is no "minimum certainty about the existence of a criminal act", nor "the possibility that the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office would seek a conviction" or have an "interest in acting". "Those conditions have to be present when a non-prosecution agreement is offered, once the agreement is an alternative to the filing of a complaint," Neymar's lawyers have argued, an argument that has been accepted by the Brazilian Justice.