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Tax a struggle for footballers like Cannavaro

There may be many reasons we can think of to sentence Fabio Cannavaro to 10 months in prison.

Cannavaro and his wife were deemed to be in contempt of court after enjoying a dip in their pool. Photo: Reuters

Cannavaro and his wife were deemed to be in contempt of court after enjoying a dip in their pool. Photo: Reuters

There may be many reasons we can think of to sentence Fabio Cannavaro to 10 months in prison.

An entire generation of centre forwards may, too, wish to see him behind bars for crimes against attacking play during his time as the world’s most parsimonious defender, a magnificently destructive influence whose refusal to yield earned him the nickname The Berlin Wall.

However, the fact is the man who lifted the World Cup in 2006 was sent down for a wholly unexpected transgression: Taking a dip with a woman in a swimming pool.

What’s more, it was his pool, sited in the grounds of his expansive villa near Naples. And the woman was his wife. Even if he had gone in wearing the wrong colour of wristband, that seems an extraordinarily Draconian punishment.

As it happens, the issue here runs deeper than Cannavaro’s deep end.

The retired Juventus and Real Madrid great has been under investigation for some time over tax returns from his company, Fd Services, through which payments for his commercial work are channelled.

State prosecutors claim the company owes €1 million (S$1.52 million) in unpaid corporation tax, regional charges and VAT.

In an economy in urgent need of civic funds, this is no small amount. As part of their investigation, tax inspectors seized Cannavaro’s Neapolitan retreat. They then sought an order preventing him from gaining access to it, presumably to prevent him from attempting to change any records that might be held there.

What Cannavaro could not have expected was that the edict extended to his pool. Unless, of course, he keeps his computers in the changing room.

Even so, when the former Italy captain and his wife went for a swim there recently on a trip home from China, where he is coaching Guangzhou Evergrande, they were deemed to be in breach of the terms of the seizure and, thus, in contempt of court.

A custodial sentence was the outcome, which seems a hefty price to pay for a few constitutional lengths.

As yet, Cannavaro (left) has not been locked up. Sentence has been suspended while an appeal is heard.

So he has not been obliged to explain to his charges in China that he will not be taking training on Monday, Tuesday or indeed any time for the rest of the season and beyond.

However, if his lawyers fail in their attempt to have the judgment overruled, then the football team in the Naples prison is about to be bolstered by the most significant piece of inmate transfer business since Peter Storey had a season ticket at the Scrubs in the ’70s.

But behind Cannavaro’s inconvenience is a more significant fact about the modern game. The concept of tax appears to be something with which many of our superstar footballers struggle.

In the United Kingdom, nearly 100 players, including Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney, face huge demands for retrospective tax after becoming involved in a scheme centred on investment in movie making.

While you would have thought earning well more than £100,000 (S$209,000) a week may reduce the urgency of finding tax savings, it seems very unlikely that Gerrard and Rooney spend their downtime from training scouring the Internet for ways to pay HM Revenue and Customs less than they are expected to.

Prosecuting ordinary people does not garner the attention tax inspectors hope for. Going after big names sends signals.

Which is why Cannavaro has been pursued so aggressively — there is an element in his prosecution of making an example of him, a demonstration that even the nation’s most gilded figures are not beyond the legal requirement to pay their dues.

Frankly, given what has happened to one of the game’s true greats in Italy, some of the Premier League’s leading lights may be advised to be careful the next time they plunge into their own deep end.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

Jim White is a sports columnist for the Daily Telegraph.

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