Former tennis player Arantxa Sánchez Vicario has been sentenced by a Barcelona court to two years in prison and her ex-husband, Josep Santacana, to three years and three months for plotting a plot to avoid paying a debt of more than six million euros to Bank of Luxembourg.
In the ruling, to which Efe has had access, the head of criminal court number 25 of Barcelona considers that there is sufficient evidence that the convicted persons decapitalized their assets to avoid paying the Luxembourg entity for the loan it gave them. to pay a fine of 5.2 million for fraud against the Treasury.
Sánchez Vicario will not go to jail
For this reason, in addition to the fines imposed, which total 5,400 euros in the case of Sánchez Vicario and 7,650 in that of Santacana, the ruling requires them to compensate the Bank of Luxembourg with the 6.6 million euros of the debt. unpaid
The ruling includes the suspension of Sánchez Vicario’s imprisonment, who already in the trial reached an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office to achieve a reduction in sentence in exchange for confessing to the crime, as long as he does not reoffend within a period of two years and pays the fine. fixed compensation.
“He had sufficient assets to pay the debt
The judge sees it as proven that the tennis player “had and at all times had sufficient assets to cover the debt and that, through acts of sale and subtraction from seizure actions, she prevented the collection of the debt, without destination” or a single euro” to pay it.
The ruling recalls that the athlete “has assumed his responsibility with respect to the facts that are the subject of the accusation”, by acknowledging his participation in them, for which he applies the mitigating circumstances of reparation for damage and confession, and admits that it was Santacana who plotted or the plot to not pay the debt.
The defendant, the ruling recalls, argued that she had “no knowledge related to the management of assets, and that she has always entrusted it to third parties, first to her parents, since her marriage” and later, in November 2009, to her ex-husband.
The conviction of Josep Santanaca
Regarding Santacana, who in principle would have to serve the prison sentence, the judge believes that it is “amply proven” that he was the person who managed his wife’s assets since he exercised control of it and “devised and carried out “the depatrimonialization operations that led to the impossibility of paying the debt contracted with the complainant.”
For the judge, it is “absolutely credible” that the accused “had no knowledge of asset management, nor probably any interest, and that she had always transferred management of her assets to third parties.” Josep Santacana, adds the judge, “had knowledge (since he had worked in the real estate sector) and direct interest in that management, in his position as husband of the owner”, in addition to being the person “of maximum trust” of the athlete .
“It in no way exempts Arantxa Sánchez Vicario from not taking direct charge of the management, since she evidently had full knowledge of what was being done with her assets and was enjoying it (…), but she did not have the capacity or knowledge to direct the depatrimonialization operations,” adds the ruling.
