Former Sevilla attacker Wissam Ben Yedder has been sentenced to six months in jail in Spain for tax fraud, court sources said on Tuesday.
Ben Yedder, who left the Spanish club for Monaco in 2019, was also fined around 134,000 euros ($146,000) by the Seville Provincial Court and will not have to serve the sentence.
The sentence is suspended, conditional on the Monaco captain not reoffending for two years.
The magistrates consider it proven that Ben Yedder, who played for Sevilla between 2016 and 2019, “did not present in due time” the tax return he was obliged to after his first year in Spain.
The player only submitted this declaration in March 2019 when the Spanish tax authorities initiated a verification procedure.
However, Ben Yedder “consciously falsified it by not including the interest received” from three accounts he held, according to the court.
The striker also failed to declare nearly 80,000 euros earned for his image rights, paid to a company he set up to “conceal this income”.
The judgement notes the player subsequently paid the missing amount to the tax authorities together with the interest generated by his late payment.
Ben Yedder, 32, has played for France 19 times, making his international debut in 2018.
