Lionel Messi has appeared in court in Barcelona to testify for the first time at his tax fraud trial.
The 28-year-old was cheered and jeered as he emerged from a van accompanied by his father, Jorge Horacio Messi.
The two are accused of using a chain of fake companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying €4.16m (£3.23m) in taxes on €10.1m earned through the sale of his image rights between 2007 and 2009.
After his court appearance, the five-time world player of the year will fly to the US, where Argentina take on Copa America defending champions Chile in their first game of the three-week tournament in California on Monday.
The high-profile case kicked off on Tuesday without Messi, as he was recovering in his home town of Rosario in Argentina from a lower back injury he sustained during a friendly match against Honduras last week.
Under Spanish law, a defendant is not obliged to attend the full trial if prosecutors seek a jail sentence of less than two years – as is the case here.
The tax fraud trial comes at a time of voter anger over steep government cuts to health and social spending, as the government struggles to bring Spain’s public deficit down.
Messi’s former tax advisers came out in support of the football star when they took the stand on Wednesday, saying the player never handled his own wealth management.
He “didn’t take any decisions and I didn’t see anyone consulting him for anything”, Angel Juárez, one of the partners at law firm Juárez Veciana which managed Messi’s tax affairs at the time, told the court.
Inigo de Loyola, another partner and Juárez’s brother, added: “I don’t know if any of my correspondence has been included in the case, but they will see that Lionel Messi does not appear in any of it.”
The Barcelona forward and his defence team have long argued that Messi’s father handled the footballer’s finances without reporting to him, and the striker was not aware of any wrongdoing.
Messi and his father, who has managed his son’s affairs since he was a child, have been charged with three counts of tax fraud.
Spanish prosecutors are seeking a jail sentence of 22 and ahalf months for them if they are found guilty, plus fines equivalent to the amount that was allegedly defrauded.
However, any such sentence would probably be suspended, as is common in Spain for first offences carrying a sentence of less than two years.
Messi and his father made a voluntary payment of €5m – equal to the amount of the alleged unpaid taxes plus interest – in August 2013 after being formally investigated, which is expected to mitigate any sentence if they are found guilty.
Messi’s father is also scheduled to take the stand for the first time on Thursday and lawyers will make their closing arguments, which could potentially run into Friday.
