Atletico de Madrid striker Diego Costa has been handed a six-month prison sentence for tax fraud in Spain.
As highlighted by El Mundo, the former Chelsea star will not spend any time behind bars as he has agreed to pay a fine in its place.
The prison sentence was replaced by a 12-month fine whereby the player would have to pay a rate of €100 per day over the course of a year, totalling in the region of €36k.
The decision was confirmed in a Madrid court on Thursday with the 31-year-old pleading guilty to defrauding the Spanish state of €1.1m by not declaring payments of more than €5.15m of his 2014 switch to Stamford Bridge.
Costa already reimbursed the Treasury a few months ago of the €1.1m that he evaded during the 2014 financial year.
The Spanish Treasury has also decided that Costa did not fully pay the advertising contract that he signed with Adidas to the value of €800k, relating to his image rights.
There is no evidence that the player has used ‘off shore’ companies or other schemes to hide his image rights, with instead a ‘strict’ reading of the rules declaring he had declared as a British tax payer for the relevant financial year when he had spent six months living in Spain.
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