Spain: A new complaint against Lionel Messi and his foundation dismissed

Spanish justice has dismissed a second complaint filed in 2020 against Argentine football star Lionel Messi and his foundation by a man accusing them of tax evasion, fraud and money laundering, the National Court of Justice announced on Friday. This man, an Argentinian named Federico Rettori claiming to have worked for the foundation of Messi, had already filed another complaint on the same grounds in 2019, which had been dismissed.

Despite this, Mr Rettori, resident in Spain, again filed a complaint against the footballer, his father Jorge, his brother Rodrigo and his foundation, and was heard by a judge in September 2020, after bringing “more documentation”, indicates the court document. But after two years of investigation, “no criminal act on the part of the persons targeted by the complaint could be proved”, writes the judge.

The complainant was “never employed” by the Messi Foundation

In his initial complaint in 2019, Rettori claimed that the funds collected by the foundation, which “were originally intended for social actions”, had been “diverted to other private activities or bank accounts different from those declared by this foundation”. In addition, the investigation established that“in fact, the complainant was never employed” by the Messi Foundation, she emphasizes.

In fact, details the magistrate, Mr. Rettori chaired an association called El Buen Camino (“The good path”), which had received from the Messi foundation a total of 150,000 euros in 2014-2015 to fight against infant mortality in Sierra Leone, project aborted due to the Ebola epidemic in this country.