The Supreme Court has affirmed a pivotal acquittal in a long-running case that involved a former football star and current coach of Bayer Leverkusen, Xabi Alonso, who was previously accused of defrauding the Spanish Treasury by nearly two million euros between 2010 and 2012. The decision marks the culmination of a complex legal process that scrutinized the athlete’s finances and the procedures surrounding his image rights contracts.
In a ruling issued this summer, the Criminal Chamber rejected an appeal lodged by the State Prosecutor’s Office against a Madrid High Court of Justice verdict that confirmed Alonso’s second acquittal in relation to alleged tax offenses. The court also addressed claims against two tax advisers, framing the matter as a dispute concerning a tax crime against the Public Treasury. The central focus remained on a contract dated August 1, 2009, under which Alonso assigned image rights to a company linked to the Madeira region, a Portuguese autonomous region renowned for its corporate registration practices. Legal representatives for Alonso argued that the contract reflected a genuine business transaction, while the prosecution contended that it was a sham designed to obscure the true taxation of income tied to the footballer’s image rights.
The Supreme Court drew a clear distinction between Alonso’s case and other appellate instances that involved professional football players who were convicted by the Barcelona Court. It emphasized that those earlier rulings were not analogous to Alonso’s situation because those players had been convicted initially, whereas Alonso had been acquitted in the present matter. The court also explained the limits of objection as a procedural tool intended to transform an acquittal into a conviction. While there could be evidentiary inferences that might permit reconsideration in another trial, the Madrid Court’s denial that the contract with the company connected to Madeira involved any form of simulation played a decisive role in upholding the acquittal. In short, the tribunal underscored that fraud could not be inferred as an element of the intellectual support for the contract, and that attempts to revisit the acquittal were not warranted by the record of the case, particularly given the close alignment of the facts with the earlier acquittal decision.
The decision also explains that if the taxpayer’s liquidation document plainly reveals all profits from any economic activity and is accompanied by a proposal to the Public Treasury, then the audit services’ interpretation of the tax treatment should be evaluated against this factual backdrop. A disagreement over interpretation—specifically about how much was earned rather than what was earned—cannot, in the court’s view, form the basis for a criminal proceeding. The Madrid judgment and the defense’s position were left with a degree of incongruity in how the figures were read, but the Supreme Court maintained that such discrepancies do not automatically convert a supposed misinterpretation into evidence of criminal conduct.
Commenting on the handling of expert testimony, the court noted that there was no abnormality in giving greater weight to a defense expert’s report than to an official expert opinion. The judges highlighted that valuing competing expert assessments is an intrinsic part of judicial evaluation and that such considerations should be seen as a sign of respect for the principles of contradiction and the right to defense. These elements were described as legitimate sources of the criminal process, reinforcing the legitimacy of the defense’s position and the overall integrity of the proceedings. The opinion suggested that, in this case, the process successfully preserved the essential rights of the defense and avoided discrediting the due process protections that underpin fair adjudication. The court’s stance reinforces that the existence of disputes over interpretation, the credibility of appraisals, and procedural safeguards do not automatically translate into criminal liability or a reversal of acquittals absent compelling, legally admissible evidence. The end result is an authoritative affirmation of the acquittal while underscoring the boundaries of criminal prosecution in complex matters of tax law and image-rights compensation.