MANCHESTER United manager José Mourinho has appeared in court over alleged 'tax evasion', and told the judge his situation had already been resolved two years ago.
The Portuguese trainer, 54, was accused by Madrid provincial prosecution of failing to declare €3.3 million in income tax for the years 2011 and 2012.
During Friday's hearing at the court Pozuelo de Alarcón, which lasted little more than five minutes, Mourinho said that when he had left Spain in 2013 he had been 'convinced his tax situation was legal', but that when his affairs were investigated, he signed an agreement and paid what he owed.
“I didn't argue, I just paid and signed the papers, and thought the subject was closed,” he told reporters after leaving the court.
Mourinho's solicitor, José Antonio Choclán – who also represented Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo in a near-identical case recently – entered the court about 10 minutes earlier than his client, via the back door, slipping past the crowds of reporters outside.
The Manchester United trainer himself, however, had to wade through a sea of cameras.
Mourinho is accused of setting up front companies to launder his income from image rights, or royalties for the use of his face and name in advertising.
Like Ronaldo, Mourinho believed these royalties would be declared in their companies' separate tax returns and did not therefore have to be included in their individual income tax declarations.
Tax authorities in Spain say Mourinho signed a contract ceding his image royalties to the firm Kooper Services, S.A., based in the British Virgin Islands, prior to September 17, 2004 when these royalties were then transferred from Kooper Services to the Irish company Multisports & Image Management Limited.
Multisports then signed a contract with Polaris Sports Limited in late 2008, also based in the Republic of Ireland, in which the latter agreed to seek out and negotiate commercial deals on the former's behalf.
The Treasury, in Spain, said these 'corporate structures' were 'used to mask income earned from image royalties'.
After leaving his post as Chelsea FC manager in 2010, Mourinho signed up with Real Madrid FC and moved to the Spanish capital, becoming tax resident there.
But in 2011 and 2012, the prosecution says, Mourinho presented his income tax declarations without including his ceded image royalties.
He was informed in July 2014 that the tax office had opened an investigation into his declarations between 2010 and 2012, and his non-resident tax return for 2013, and provided copies of his accounts from Global Directors Limited and Operating Nominees Limited, which by then was the 100% shareholder of Kooper Services.
Mourinho signed a form in July 2015 recognising he had not declared his image royalties and agreeing to pay the outstanding tax plus interest and fines totalling nearly €1.15m.
The tax office says it then found out Kooper Services had been set up by Mourinho and that he was the sole owner via the company Kaitaia Trust, based in New Zealand – a firm he had also created and from which he and his wife and children drew an income.
Mourinho is the latest in a series of football stars to have fallen foul of the Spanish tax authorities using similar corporate networks, although all of them say they did so in good faith, believing them to be above board.
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