Lionel Messi loses appeal over 21 month prison sentence

24 mag 2017

The Spanish Supreme Court has confirmed Lionel Messi’s 21 month prison sentence, Spanish media have just announced. The Argentinean superstar and his father were found guilty of tax fraud last July when Barcelona court sentenced them both for 21 months and fine € 2 million.

Although a hard core of the magistrates in charge of reviewing the appeal was in favor of reducing the sentence to Leo based on the aforementioned doctrine of 'deliberate ignorance', it has not finally been so, and unlike in other cases as The Infanta Cristina, the concept has not served as an attenuating. According to legal sources, accepting 'deliberate ignorance' as a mitigating factor for the Argentinean could have set a judicial precedent to which a large number of people accused for the same reason would have been accepted.

Reuters, however, can confirm Messi won’t serve any jail time as “sentences under two years in length in Spain can be served as probation”.