Carlo Ancelotti, head coach of Brazil and former Real Madrid manager, has been sentenced to one year in prison for tax fraud.
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A Spanish court ruled Ancelotti failed to declare income from image rights while managing Real Madrid during the 2014 tax year.
Prosecutors accused him of evading over €1 million in income tax by misleading authorities about his earnings from those rights.
While Ancelotti was cleared of similar charges for 2015, the court couldn’t prove he stayed long enough in Spain that year.
He moved to London after being sacked by Real Madrid in 2015 before later joining Bayern Munich as head coach in 2016.
Although given a one-year sentence, Ancelotti is unlikely to serve jail time under Spanish law due to its suspended sentence provisions.
He was also fined €386,000, far less than the €3.2 million initially sought by Spanish prosecutors in the high-profile case, reports Independent.
Ancelotti insisted during the trial that he was unaware of wrongdoing and relied on an English advisor to manage his contracts.
“When Madrid proposed the image rights deal, I trusted my advisor,” Ancelotti stated, maintaining his innocence in court.
The 66-year-old joins a growing list of football figures prosecuted by Spanish authorities for tax-related offenses.
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