Cristiano Ronaldo gets suspended sentence and €18.8m fine

As the custodial term is less than two years and for a first offence, the Portuguese team captain will not have to serve it.

Tax evasion, deliberate or not, is considered a civil offence and normally only carries a fine if sufficiently high until the amount unpaid reaches €120,000, when it is automatically considered a crime.

This means that by default, celebrities who fail to meet their tax obligations will be facing criminal charges almost from the first non-payment, given the size of their ordinary earnings.

In Ronaldo's case, the dad-of-four had left his affairs in the hands of his accountants, who created a front-company structure with the player's permission in his days of playing for Manchester United - a structure that was legal at the time in the UK.

The five-times Ballon d'Or winner retained this taxation framework when he moved to Madrid, since he assumed it was also legal in Spain.

This turned out not to be the case, and for four tax years between 2010 and 2014, avoided paying €5.7m in tax.

He refunded this as soon as he became aware of the problem, plus interest, but has now had to pay a fine on top of 3.3 times the amount subject to his 'evasion'.

Given the media furore surrounding Ronaldo's final hearing, he had hoped to be able to slip into the court building via the back door, but ended up having to walk through a sea of reporters - and sign several autographs.

Dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, the player was accompanied by his partner and mum of his baby daughter, Aragón-born model Georgina Rodríguez.

The hearing started at 10.05 and was over by 10.10, and the couple walked out hand in hand and smiling in relief at 10.25.

"It's over, it's over," Ronaldo told the crowds as soon as they exited the building.

He did not give a press conference, to the disappointment of reporters who had camped out all night in the court grounds, but simply told everyone it had 'all gone perfectly' before jumping back in a black van with its windows blacked out.

Ronaldo and Georgina will now return to Torino, northern Italy, where they set up home late in 2018 after the Portuguese legend's shock move to Juventus.

It is rumoured that, despite his long-running emotional attachment and great success with Real Madrid, the tax issue and court hearings were what eventually pushed him to leave the country.