Neymar accusers demand PRISON sentence over Barcelona transfer

Suraj Radia

• 13 Oct 2022 17:31 BST
• 5 min read

Neymar has been accused of fraud in regards to his 2013 transfer to Barcelona and lawyers in Brazil have demanded that the Paris Saint-Germain star be sent to prison for five years.

Barcelona signed Neymar from Santos for a fee they reported as €57.1 million but Brazilian fund DIS believe the figure was falsely reported by the Catalan side.

A report in Marca claims DIS acquired the rights to 40% of Neymar’s future transfer fee for €2m in 2009 but they received just €6.8m from the transfer due to Barcelona’s structuring of the deal which saw €40m go to the player’s family and €17.1m going to Santos.

The company’s lawyers claim that Neymar, along with his parents and Barcelona, ‘betrayed the trust’ of DIS and fraudulently signed contracts to avoid paying a clause of €65m.

As a result, the firm told Catalan lawyers that they believe Neymar should be imprisoned for five years, as well as being banned as a player during his sentence and a fine of €149m.

In addition, they also believe former Barcelona chiefs Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu should receive the same prison sentence and be disqulalified from holding managerial positions for seven-and-a-half years, as well as a fine of €195m.

Public prosecutors are said to request five years in prison and a €10m fine for Rosell, with a same fine for Neymar and a two-year sentence.

Long-standing case set to drag on

Neymar lost an appeal towards the case in Spain’s High Court in 2017 and he is set to testify in the upcoming trial, with both the player and Barcelona denying any wrongdoing.

Barcelona paid €25m to Santos for the Neymar’s rights and another €60m to his father’s business, of which 55% was given to the player’s club, according to DIS.

DIS claim this was done by Barcelona agreeing to pay €4.5m for a friendly match as well as €7.9m for the rights to sign three players, which were never exercised.

"Neymar's rights have not been sold to the highest bidder. There were clubs that offered up to 60 million euros," DIS lawyer Paulo Nasser told a news conference in Barcelona.