Former Spanish tennis star Arantxa Sanchez Vicario has been handed a suspended prison sentence for involvement in a fraud case.
The criminal court in Barcelona found Sanchez Vicario, along with her former husband Josep Santacana, and three others guilty of hiding their assets to evade a debt of €7.6m ($8.27m) owed to Banque de Luxembourg, including interest.
The court sentenced Santacana to three years and three months in jail, while Sanchez Vicario was given a suspended prison term on the condition that she does not commit any other crime within the next two years.
Sanchez Vicario, who was the first Spanish player to reach the top of women’s tennis rankings, had won the French Open three times and the U.S. Open as a singles player before retiring in 2002.
She and Santacana divorced in 2019, but both denied the charges against them in this case.
In addition to the suspended sentence, the court ordered the five defendants to pay €6.6m in compensation to Banque de Luxembourg and also imposed unspecified fines.
Sanchez Vicario had argued that Santacana was responsible for handling her money and that she had no knowledge of any illegal tampering with her family assets.
However, the court concluded that she was fully aware of the debt she owed to Banque de Luxembourg and was benefiting from the concealment of her assets.
The case originated in 2009 when the Supreme Court in Spain ordered Sanchez Vicario to pay a fine of €5.2m for tax fraud between 1989 and 2003.
This was when she was resident in Spain rather than Andorra, as she had claimed.
After the couple transferred their assets from Banque de Luxembourg, the Spanish state eventually recovered the money via a guarantee agreement with the bank.
Although Sanchez Vicario had already paid around €1.9m to the bank and had committed to paying the remainder of what she owed from half of her income, the court determined that she had full knowledge of her assets and was benefiting from them.
The bank accused the couple of never honouring their debt and concealing their assets.
While a Spanish court ruled in favour of the bank in a civil suit in 2014, the money was never paid, and the bank ultimately resorted to the criminal courts to pursue the case.
