Post mortem victory in Cassation for Diego Armando Maradona
: the Supreme Court, with a verdict published today and discussed in a closed-door hearing last October 20, established that the Argentine bomber - who died on November 25, 2020 - has the right to the amnesty granted to the Napoli Calcio and validated by the Central Tax Commission of Naples in 2013. Thanks to this decision of the 'ermellini' it will be possible to close most of the Maradona tax dispute, estimated value of about 40 million euros, and now the Campania Regional Commission will have to evaluate , in the interest of the heirs, if there are non-condonable pending.
As for the reasons for the tax dispute, the taxman argued that Napoli Calcio had paid black fees to Maradona, Careca and Alemao for several years, for several billion lire, and the amounts subtracted from the tax authorities had been disputed with six notices of assessment issued against the Pibe de oro, and another six for the other two Brazilian players, four for Careca and two for Alemao.
According to the Revenue Agency, Napoli Calcio had paid 'in black' "part of the compensation of the three players, using fictitiously some foreign companies, which dealt with the management of the advertising rights of the athletes; since the football club had acquired a conspicuous percentage of these rights, but over the years it had never received any sum from the companies that dealt with advertising rights, the Agency had considered that the purchase of the rights, in reality, concealed the black payments of part of the fees for the performances of the players ".
All of them challenged the tax bills, except for Maradona to whom the Italian taxman daringly managed to deliver three notices of arrears in 1993 through the Consulate of Seville, in 1998 at Milan Malpensa airport and the last in 2001. This was the only notice contested by Dieguito's lawyers.
After ups and downs, in the end, in 2004, Napoli Calcio fails and the curatorship of the company - despite the fact that the tax judges in 1994 had backtracked, deeming the trilateral agreement between players, foreign clubs and Napoli unproven - decides to close the entire game and turn the page and adhere to the tax amnesty by paying 10% of the disputed sums.
Maradona also later asked to join the amnesty granted to Naples, but in 2014 his request was rejected due to the long 'inaction' before the tax authorities, but the pending charges of Alemao and Careca who had submitted supplementary tax returns are extinguished.
Now, however, the 'ermellini' have established that
"the facilitated definition which Calcio Napoli has joined can then extend to the player Maradona" due to "passive solidarity".
"If Maradona were denied the possibility of intervening in the judgment before the Central Tax Commission, in order to benefit from the amnesty to which the company adhered,
there would be a clear absence of 'effective' protection of the taxpayer, who would have no other possibility to assert their reasons elsewhere, with the occurrence of a real 'denied injustice' ".
Now the whole file is back in the hands of the Campania Regional Commission which will have to verify "once the amnesty has been extended" to Maradona "his tax position for the residual debt towards the Revenue Agency".
Calculating that the first warning dates back to 1985, Maradona has been dribbling taxes and bills for almost 40 years.