Ancelotti sentenced to prison for a year over tax fraud with former Real Madrid manager convicted of failing to pay tax on image rights.
After a Spanish court found former Real Madrid manager and Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti guilty of one count of tax fraud, he was sentenced to one year in prison and fined about €400,000 (£345,000).
Ancelotti, who oversaw Real Madrid from 2013 to 2015 and again from 2021 to 2025, was charged in April with cheating Spain’s tax office of over €1 million (£836,857) in unreported image rights revenues in 2014 and 2015.
The 66-year-old former Chelsea and Everton manager was accused by prosecutors of using shell companies outside of Spain to create “opacity vis-a-vis the Spanish treasury … concealing the real beneficiary of the income from the exploitation of his image rights.” The prosecution had sought a four-year and nine-month jail sentence.
Ancelotti was found guilty on Wednesday of not paying taxes on his image rights earnings in 2014, despite telling the court that he had assumed his financial affairs were in order and “never thought a fraud could have been committed.”
After concluding that he had committed “an offence against the tax authorities,” the court sentenced him to 12 months in prison and fined him €386,000. The 2015 charge was dropped against him.
Because Spanish law rarely sends non-violent, first-time offenders with sentences under two years to prison, the Italian manager will not be imprisoned despite the custodial term.