A Spanish court has given AS Monaco striker Wissam Ben Yedder a six-month suspended prison sentence and fined him €133,799 ($145,961) for tax offences during his time as a Sevilla player, court documents showed on Tuesday.
In Spain, prison sentences under two years for non-violent crimes rarely require a defendant without previous convictions to serve jail time.
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The sentence was agreed in a plea deal between Ben Yedder's defence, the prosecutor and the state attorney who represented tax authorities.
French national Ben Yedder, who played for Sevilla between 2016 and 2019, failed to pay his taxes on time in 2017, according to the court document dated March 9 and disclosed on Tuesday.
Following a request from tax authorities in 2019, the striker paid €225,323 in back taxes but did not include interest received as income from movable capital and failed to declare a sponsorship contract with Adidas, the document said.
Ben Yedder later paid €51,007 to include those items plus interest.
Players such as Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo, Argentina's Lionel Messi and Spain's Diego Costa have also previously faced tax cases in Spain. They all agreed to settle by paying large fines.
