Costa handed six-month prison sentence and fined for tax fraud

Atletico Madrid‘s Diego Costa has pleaded guilty to defrauding the Spanish state of more than €1 million (£813,000/$1,127,000) after failing to declare payments of over €5m earned from his 2014 move to Chelsea.

The striker was sentenced to six months in prison on Thursday, but Spanish law states that non-violent crimes with a punishment of under two years’ imprisonment can instead be resolved with a fine for first-time offenders.

In Costa’s case, the Brazil-born Spain international will fork out an additional payment of just over €500,000 on top of the missing €1m in order to fully satisfy the courts, with a failure to declare image rights also having come under the state’s microscope.