Ex-world No 1 tennis player Arantxa Sánchez Vicario found guilty of fraud but will avoid prison

Tennis great Arantxa Sánchez Vicario has been sentenced to a two-year jail term for concealing assets. The former Spanish tennis star agreed with the Prosecutor’s Office to reduce the sentence in exchange for acknowledging the facts and will not go to prison.

Three months after the last session of the trial was held, the former world No. 1 in both singles and doubles and her ex-husband, Josep Santacana—on trial as well—were accused of extortion of assets for supposedly hiding their assets to avoid paying off a multi-million euro debt to the Bank of Luxembourg. Today, finally, the sentence for which the accusations requested four years in prison has been announced.

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However, it was already known that the former number one would not go to prison since she reached an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office based on the recognition of the facts, thus benefiting from the reduction of the sentence from four to two years in prison by applying the mitigating circumstances of confession and reparation for the damage, given that she acknowledged guilt, has collaborated with justice, and has returned almost two million to the bank.

However, for her ex-husband, the request for four years in prison remained in place since the previous deliberations already indicated that he is responsible as the author and necessary collaborator of the events, something that has been confirmed today after the sentence was notified to the lawyers of both parties, Borja Vives, on behalf of the former tennis player, and Joan Segarra, as part of the defense of Josep Santacana, in the Criminal Court No. 25 of Barcelona.

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Thus, while the former tennis player has emerged more or less unscathed and has been sentenced to two years in prison for hiding assets, a sentence that she will not serve after reaching the aforementioned agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, her ex-husband, Josep Santacana, has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison as the mastermind of the decapitalization operation of his now ex-wife. “In accordance with the evidence conducted in the oral trial, it is amply proven that JOSEP S. B. was the person who managed the assets of his wife, ARÁNZU SÁNCHEZ Vicario, since he took control of them in November 2009, and that he devised and carried out the depatrimonialization operations that made it impossible to pay the debt contracted with the plaintiff,” the ruling states.

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Although Santacana runs the risk of going to prison, the sentence is not final and can still be appealed. In fact, since the sentences are not too long, it is quite unlikely that the Prosecutor’s Office will consider requesting his entry into provisional prison and waiting. for a final resolution.