Elite Soccer’s Culture of Graft

On Tuesday Cristiano Ronaldo, smiling and bedizened in a black coat and diamond earrings, arrived at court in Madrid, Spain, to receive a $21.6 million fine for tax fraud. Ronaldo, a five-time FIFA world player of the year who last summer moved from Real Madrid to Italian giant Juventus, has become a human billboard since bursting onto the global stage as a teenager with Manchester United. In accusing the player of four counts of tax evasion between 2011 and 2014, a Madrid state prosecutor said Ronaldo “intentionally” did not declare income, falsely reported income as coming from real estate, and funneled cash through a Virgin Islands-incorporated firm to “create a screen in order to hide his total income from Spain’s tax office.”

Source: newrepublic.com