2023-06-20 07:56:23
Justice has ruled that FC Barcelona helped its former basketball player Víctor Sada defraud the Treasury. This is stated in a judgment of January 25, 2023, to which he has had exclusive access THE SPANISH NEWSPAPER, from the Prensa Ibérica group, which was issued by the First Administrative Litigation Section of the Catalan Superior Court of Justice (TSJCat). The judges hold that the blaugrana club signed “simulated contracts” with an intermediary company that allowed the one who was also a player of the Spanish national team to hide income of 177,029 euros from the treasury.
However, the action of FC Barcelona does not deserve any criminal reproach for the court as a result of this contentious-administrative procedure, given that it focuses exclusively on the figure of Víctor Sada, now assistant coach of Barça Atlètic, the club’s subsidiary.
In the ruling, the magistrates confirm the decision of the Economic-Administrative Court of Catalonia that had agreed to a tax regularization after detecting the simulation of contracts between the club and the entity U1ST Sports Basket España SL (agent representing the player), “concealing” part of the former player’s earnings, specifically 69,037 euros in 2012; 71,995 euros in 2013 and 35,997 euros in 2014.
The “cover-up” consisted in the fact that FC Barcelona signed a contract with the agent, at the same time that it did so with the player. “In the present case, it is necessary to confirm the existence of simulation or in other wordsthe concurrence of the requirements that make it possible to determine that the agent is a provider of services for the (recurring) player and not for the club”, the magistrates confirm, who emphasize that the Inspection carried out “a considerable probative activity” that demonstrates “the effective existence of the simulation”. “The Chamber shares the probative assessment made by the Inspection”, highlights the judicial resolution.
the clues
The ruling lists the indications that lead the Catalan Supreme Court to conclude that the agent is actually acting on behalf of the player and not Barça. For example, when the club hired Sada on August 1, 2008 and renewed him on August 15, 2012, in parallel, on the same days, FC Barcelona signed two agreements: “Labor agreements with the player and now analysed, of similar content, of representation and management. Upon signing the latter In the first case, the club and the entity U1ST Sports appear and in the second case, the club, the entity and the player“.
Another indication that the contracts were irregular, always according to the sentence, is that in the text of the same the entity U1ST Sports is referred to “in its capacity as agent of the player”, despite not providing the athlete’s contract with his representative. Clause 5 of the 2012 contract expressly acknowledges the relationship between U1ST Sports and the player.
In addition, the contracts with the agent are linked to the existence of the agreement signed between the player and the club, so Barça’s legal agreement with U1ST Sport would automatically terminate as soon as the player’s employment relationship ended. “No one knew better than the appellant that the entity U1ST Sports was his agent in the negotiations and subsequent signing of their employment contracts with the FC Barcelona, being the one who had to remunerate his agent for the services rendered. Therefore, if it is agreed that said payments are made by the club that hired you on your own, These payments represent a further remuneration derived from their employment relationship with the club, constituting ultimately, income from work“, continues the resolution.
Barça, an “intermediary”
And in this case, Barça acts, the sentence continues, “as a mere intermediary in the payment because, instead of paying the amounts corresponding to the player and that the agent subsequently pays the agent for the services rendered to him, he makes the payments directly to the agent. As a result”, the Chamber emphasizes, “the The debtor for the services provided by the entity U1ST Sports is not FC Barcelona but the player (the appellant), in such a way that the payments should have been made by him and not by the club.”.
And that these incomes were not declared constitutes, say the magistrates, “clearly willful conduct” on the part of Víctor Sada: “As it cannot be otherwise in the cases of simulation, the taxpayer is perfectly aware that he is the debtor for the services rendered to the agent, while only he benefits from such services“, concludes the judgment.
In relation to Sada’s claim that the amount that he considers should have been paid by Barça be deducted from the settlements, the magistrates reject it, considering that the former player “actively participated in the simulation aimed at avoiding taxation as income from work of the amounts paid by the FC Barcelona, so that the reason that the withholding has not been made cannot be attributed exclusively to the withholding agent but also to the appellant“.
A file in 2017
The Treasury opened a file on February 20, 2017 to verify Sada’s personal income tax, which ended with a disagreement report and a provisional settlement agreement. On April 25, 2017, a sanctioning procedure was initiated that concluded on October 19, 2017 through the notification of an agreement by which three sanctions were imposed for the commission of as many serious tax offenses.
The former Barça player was penalized for not correctly paying personal income tax for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 for the “representation and management” contracts formalized by FC Barcelona with the entity U1ST Sports, which They were signed on the same dates that the former player was hired by Barça, specifically on August 1, 2008 and August 15, 2012.
These contracts, in the opinion of the Inspectorate, they were “simulated” to “cover up” for “fraud purposes” the yields that Sada destined to pay his representative. However, the lawyer for the now coach of the Barça subsidiary defended that the sanction imposed on him was unfair, since he considered that it was agreed by the Administration “based on indications and presumptions without any proof of the commission of the offense.” Therefore, he believed that his presumption of innocence had been violated.
Overturned sentences in football
The sentence of the Catalan TSJ has been appealed in cassation before the Supreme Court, so it is not final. In this sense, THE SPANISH NEWSPAPER announced that the high court had already agreed with Real Madrid and annulled four settlements, for almost three million euros, that the Central Economic Administrative Court (TEAC) had imposed on Real Madrid for paying VAT on transfers to agents of the football players.
Real Madrid and the main LaLiga teams had paid succulent amounts to the soccer players’ agents for signings, transfers, termination of contracts or the extension or modification of the same. The invoices issued by the representatives included VAT, so the entities deducted the corresponding tax. And it was this tax that the Economic Administrative Court required the clubs to pay together with a penalty, since they considered that these funds should be covered by the players.
The version of the Barça
But the Second Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court issued on February 23 four sentences that oblige the Treasury to annul the million-dollar liquidations and the corresponding sanctions.
The FC Barcelona, before the questions of this writing on the ruling against Sada, has answered, of literal way: “We have no news of this sentence nor were we part of the procedure. It must be the result of an inspection made to the player. We cannot give our version of the facts about something that we are absolutely unaware of”. In the same sense, the club recalls that in the case of payments by athletes’ agents “there has been an interpretative discrepancy, for years, between the tax administration , the different soccer and basketball clubs, and the players”.
#Barça #simulated #contracts #allowed #basketball #player #Víctor #Sada #defraud #Treasury