Paris Saint Germain superstar Neymar will stand trial in the Spanish court for alleged fraud regarding his transfer from Santos to Barcelona.
The Brazilian came through the ranks at youth level with Santos and went on to spend four years with the senior team, before securing a high-profile switch to Barcelona in 2013 for a fee originally claimed to be €17.1million, according to the Daily Mirror.
However, that particular figure ended up being some way short of the final reported amount, as Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu has been accused of tax fraud by Brazilian investment company DIS, who are demanding 40% of the final cut the club paid for him, as the Mirror also reports.
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As per the Mirror, Bartomeu has revealed that Neymar was paid well over €40m in wages by Los Cules and DIS say they have still yet to receive the full sum they are owed.
According to La Vanguardia, the PSG winger could face a six-year jail sentence if a three-judge panel finds him guilty, but Neymar’s representatives will argue that that the case should be handled in Brazil rather than Spain.
This latest news will be worrying reading for supporters of the French champions, who have embraced Neymar as the club’s talisman since his arrival from the Camp Nou in the summer of 2017.
The Mirror reports that the prosecutor’s office released a short statement condemning the actions of those involved, which stated that the deal between Santos and Barcelona changed “The free market of football players by preventing the player from entering the market in accordance with the rules of free competition.”