Law Howard Kennedy
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The laws of the game Lois Langton and Fiona Hinds of Howard Kennedy talk you through some keys areas of the law to help make sure that you’re ahead of the game.
F
ootball has seen significant changes in recent decades. The creation and popularity of the English Premier League, the growth in TV revenues and the commercialisation of the game means that you have challenges to face, both on and off the pitch. It is important that you have a legal team alongside you that will give you the best possible advice and guidance to ensure that your focus is on your professional success.
Contracts
Family
Your strategy needs to be based around clear and effective professional contracts with your Club, agents and advisers so that your career can prosper.
Personal challenges can take their toll and you need to be prepared to face them. Cohabitation agreements, pre-nuptials, divorce and children are important issues and you have to ensure that the best interests of you and your family are preserved.
Reputation LOIS LANGTON
As your sporting career grows, so too does your reputation. Professional and personal reputations need to be enhanced, managed and safeguarded.
Building on your brand
FIONA HINDS
A strong reputation results in opportunities for sponsorship, endorsements and commercial deals. Ensuring that those agreements are properly drafted and that your brand is properly protected helps secure your career off the pitch.
Assets Your investments need securing and we can ensure that you know how to structure and protect your portfolio of assets – whether financial investments, artwork or real estate.
Disputes
Despite the very best planning, rarely does a playing career run perfectly smoothly. You need a tough, no-nonsense enforcer to deal quickly with clashes over contracts Wealth planning and relationships so that you can Once you’ve taken the lead, making focus on your game. sure that you stick to the strategy requires careful planning and Disciplinary implementation. Advice on wills, Competitive sport involves investments, trusts and tax will judgment calls and the boundaries help preserve your momentum are sometimes blurred. You need while protecting your goals. clear and practical advice to protect
your position if, for example, the rules have been broken or a drug test result is positive.
theprofessionalplayer.co.uk
the importance of having a good team off the pitch It’s a familiar plot: a wealthy person relies upon others to set up complex corporate structures to avoid paying tax, it doesn’t work and then all hell breaks loose. Lionel Messi will now face a criminal trial on allegations of tax fraud, which demonstrates the need for sportspeople to have a close circle of trusted and competent advisers.
The allegations
Legacy
The allegations came to light in 2013 following a complaint made earlier that year and Messi Junior Messi and his father are accused of defrauding made a statement on his Facebook account shortly the Spanish state on between 2007 and 2009. The before the pair was summonsed to appear in court: allegation is that they avoided paying Spanish tax ‘…we have never committed any infringement. by creating a series of shell companies through We have always fulfilled all our tax obligations, which they sold rights to use Messi’s image. following the advices of our Tax Consultants who The Court will hear allegations that the companies will take care of clarifying this situation’. involved were in Uruguay and Belize, but the In August 2013 Lionel and his funds were allegedly moved through a number of father made a €5 million voluntary companies, avoiding paying €4.165 million in taxes. ‘corrective payment’ equal to the alleged unpaid tax plus interest. The story so far This, coupled with the Messi Lionel Messi and his father have been charged family account that Lionel did not under Article 305 of the Spanish Criminal Code, participate in any decisions relating which on conviction carries a fine of up to €24 to management, was sufficient to million and up to 5 years in prison. persuade the Spanish prosecutors
Legacy is the “target man” for your team. The “sporting peak” is often over within a few years so you must have a long-term outlook and focus on life after sport. Advice on business ventures, personal investments and other commercial agreements means that your personal and professional success does not end when you hang up your boots.
Lionel Messi is considered to be one of football’s best ever players. He has been given the FIFA World Player of the Year title a record four times. He is one of the most influential players at Barcelona, helping the team to win the Champions’ League four times in his career there.
Crime Occasionally, things can go badly wrong. If you have a brush with the law, you need someone who can be there with emergency advice around the clock.
Injury Sport can be bruising and you need the right action should an injury impact on your career. We can work with you to ensure that if you are on the injury-list, you have the right structures in place not to lose out.
Lois Langton and Fiona Hinds are the joint Heads of the Sports Individuals Group at Howard Kennedy LLP, a leading London law firm. Howard Kennedy acts for a significant number of sportsmen and women and understand the sports industry from both a legal and commercial perspective. For further information please contact Lois Langton and Fiona Hinds Lois.langton@howardkennedy.com | Fiona.hinds@howardkennedy.com
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Messi in a mess -
Football is his expertise, not corporate structures, tax or finance, but he is still expected to comply with the law in these areas. That is why it is absolutely essential to the success of a sportsperson’s career that they should be able to switch off the background noise and focus on the pitch, or the court, or the pool, or the track. The best way
in 2014 to apply to the court to remove Lionel from the charge sheet. However, the prosecutors’ argument that Lionel Messi was not ‘aware of the reach, dimension, purpose or impact’ of the scheme did not hold sway with the court and it refused to drop the charges against him. The Messis appeared in court again on Wednesday 10 June to appeal again for the case to be thrown out. Lionel’s defence argued that he had ‘never devoted a minute of his life to reading, studying or analysing’ the complex contracts. Unfortunately for the player, the court argued that lack of knowledge of the scheme should not mean impunity for a person benefiting from a structure which assists fraud, even if it has been organised and executed by others. It seems therefore that Lionel and his father will face trial for the charges.
to do this is to have a team of world-class advisers around you who make the right decisions, but who communicate with you properly and effectively. Advisers need to be able to speak to you directly otherwise there is a danger that information may get lost in translation as it makes its way to you through a series of right-hand personnel. Even if ultimately acquitted following trial, Lionel will still have learned an expensive and valuable lesson about the importance of understanding the implications of documentation that he signs.
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