Spanish prosecutors insist on Ancelotti’s four-year prison sentence

The Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday upheld the four-year and nine-month prison sentence imposed on Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti for evading €1 million in taxes.

The Italian coach is accused of defrauding the public treasury of €1,062,079 (approximately $1.14 million) in taxes between 2014 (€386,361) and 2015 (€675,718) during his first stint as Real Madrid coach (from 2013 to 2015).

Ancelotti testified on Wednesday in the trial in which he is accused of two tax offenses.

The Italian coach emphasized that he never intended to defraud the Spanish public treasury and that his tax affairs were handled by his advisors, saying, “As far as I’m concerned, everything was going well.”

Ancelotti emphasized in his statement: “I never realized anything was wrong, and I never received any communication that the Public Prosecutor’s Office was investigating me.” He explained: “Everything seemed correct to me. I didn’t think there could be any fraud. However, now that I’m here, it seems that something is wrong, and that things weren’t going as I had imagined.”