A Brazilian court has frozen €42m’s worth of Barcelona forward Neymar’s assets in order to secure the payment of outstanding taxes since 2011.
According to legal sources, as per Marca, a magistrate judge ordered the player’s assets to be seized as a precautionary measure.
The Brazilian treasury is now demanding a payment of R$63.6m (€14.3m) from Neymar to cover undeclared taxes between 2011 and 2013.
However, the seizure of his assets also factors interest and fines for alleged tax evasion relating to his transfer from Santos to Barca in 2013.
With the amount of assets frozen exceeding 30 percent of Neymar’s declared income, which equates to R$244.2m (€54.9m), the court decided to seize assets belonging to three of his and his father’s companies.
The Brazilian treasury believes the attacker evaded taxes by declaring the money he received from his switch to Camp Nou as company earnings, as stated by the judge in court.
Neymar is also understood to have omitted advertising services, image rights and other contracts signed between 2011 and 2013 from his tax returns.
The judge concluded that his decision was based on a belief that the companies’ income came “exclusively” from the 23-year-old.
He becomes Barca’s third, high-profile name to be implicated in tax fraud after Lionel Messi and Josep Maria Bartomeu.
