Miscalculation saves Eto’o from prosecution in Spain 21 years later

Spain’s national court has ruled in favor of former Barcelona striker Samuel Eto’o in a dispute over image rights payments since 2005, meaning he will not have to pay the nearly €900,000 demanded by the tax authority.

As reported by the Spanish Mundo Deportivo, the 21-year legal battle between Samuel Eto’o and the Spanish tax authority has ended successfully for the former Barcelona forward, who was 24 years old in 2005 and is now 45 years old and the president of the Cameroon Football Federation.

Eto’o will not have to pay nearly €900,000 (€409,000 plus a 125% penalty) demanded by the tax authority for the 2005 tax year after winning an image rights dispute.

The newspaper points out that the decision of the National Court overturned a previous decision of the Central Economic and Administrative Court of the Kingdom of Spain, which sided with the tax authority.

What is most surprising about this case is that the national court did not rule in Ito’s favor because of the image rights, but because the tax authority exceeded the legal deadline to complete its investigation by a year.

It all started in 2005, apart from another incident a few months earlier, where Eto’o admitted to tax evasion of 3.8 million euros in court and agreed with prosecutors to avoid prison because he paid the money and confessed to his crime.

However, the Spanish tax authorities interpreted the matter to mean that in the following year, in 2005, some of the money Eto’o received was not declared as income tax but was transferred through two companies, one in Spain and the other in Hungary, in a scheme to reduce his tax burden.

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El Confidential newspaper explains that the tax authority’s investigation was limited by law to a maximum of one year to complete its work, but that period took more than twice as the tax authorities claimed that most of the delay was not their fault, but that of Eto’o, who allegedly delayed the documents by 223 days by not submitting the signed contract with Barcelona.

The Spanish newspaper reports that the court added another 43 days due to the alleged extension of time requested by the player. Thus, the tax authorities have deducted 266 days to stay within the standard period of one year.

But the National Court ruled that when the player’s legal representative informed the IRS that the document could not be found, the proper procedure was for the administration to obtain it through other means, which it did by requesting the contract directly from the club. Thus, the delay actually attributable to the player was reduced to just 24 days, and not 223 days as claimed by the IRS. As for the extra 43 days for the alleged delay, there is no conclusive evidence on file to show that Eto’o formally requested a delay.

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Ultimately, the ruling went in Eto’o’s favor and annulled the previous rulings of the Central Administrative Economic Court of December 3, 2019 and the Regional Economic Administrative Court of Catalonia of March 9, 2017, as well as the personal income tax agreements and penalties for violating the legal regime for the 2005 tax year. This judgment has the right to be appealed to the Supreme Court.