Neymar charged with Tax Evasion

Barcelona star Neymar, his father, Sandro Rosell and Josep
Maria Bartomeu have all been charged with tax evasion and
forgery of documents by authorities in Brazil.

The full document of charges issued by the Brazilian
Prosecutor's Office in Santos accuses all four of tax evasion
and fraudulent misrepresentation, citing the Barcelona
forward's father, Neymar Senior, as "the mastermind behind
several acts of contractual fraud in managing Neymar's
image rights".

Father and son are accused of using an intermediate
company, Neymar Sport e Marketing, which received money
for Neymar's image rights from both Santos and Barcelona,
even though the player himself was the only one performing
a service.

In that way, Neymar would avoid paying income taxes as an
individual - which would be higher than that for the
company. The prosecution claims that the Brazilian state
was, in this way, cheated out of 55 per cent of the money
which should have been paid.

This case is a separate one to that which is being
investigated in Spain regarding Neymar's 2013 transfer to
Barcelona - in which the forward gave testimony on Tuesday
- but that deal is also under scrutiny from the latest charges.

Rosell and Bartomeu, the former and current presidents of
the Catalan club respectively, are accused of forging "from
November 2011 onwards a series of documents to simulate
a qualified agreement between the player and Barcelona".

Those documents, it is alleged, saw the player and his father
paid €40 million in instalments which was used to facilitate
the evasion of tax.