Felix Sturm has evaded around one million euros in taxes, the Cologne Regional Court has determined. Because he was also doped in a fight, he was also found guilty of a doping violation and assault to the disadvantage of his opponent.
Cologne (dpa) - A mask hid any reaction on the face of boxing professional Felix Sturm when the presiding judge Marc Hoffmann announced the three-year sentence. The 41-year-old seemed to be staring blankly throughout the sentence.
Sturm was convicted of tax evasion and attempted tax evasion of around EUR 1 million in the years 2008 to 2010 and 2013. He was originally charged with tax evasion of around EUR 5.8 million in the years 2008 to 2015. However, Sturm was acquitted in 2011 and 2012 , The procedures regarding the 2014 and 2015 tax returns had already been suspended during the process. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
According to the ruling, Sturm had given a Swiss sports marketer around 50 percent of its combat exchanges "without having been paid for it," as the chairman said. In tax returns, Sturm had declared the payments as expenses. A large part of the sum ended up as "black money on a numbered account" Storm. Sturm had admitted to wrongly counting the payments to the sports marketer as operating costs. However, since he had kept silent about the black money, the court did not consider his confession to be particularly mitigating.
Furthermore, the German-Bosnian was found guilty of doping in the World Cup fight against the Russian Fyodor Chudinov in February 2016. At that time, the performance-enhancing agent stanozolol was found during a doping control. Since Sturm had thus fought the fight illegally, a conviction for deliberate bodily harm was also made to the disadvantage of the Russian.
Sturm had been in custody for over eight months in the trial. After depositing a deposit of 300,000 euros, Sturm was released from prison before Christmas Eve 2019. Pre-trial detention is counted towards the three-year sentence.
Homepage of the regional court
