Jose Mourinho ‘misled’ taxman over offshore account

Jose Mourinho faced a call yesterday for a criminal investigation of his tax affairs over a secret fortune held offshore.

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho is facing questions over a secret Caribbean bank account. Picture: Getty Images

Football manager Jose Mourinho faced a call yesterday for a criminal investigation of his tax affairs over a secret multi-million-pound fortune held offshore.

An investigation by The Sunday Times Insight team has found evidence suggesting that the Manchester United boss’s advisers misled the tax authorities in Britain and Spain during inquiries into more than £10 million ($17m) in earnings hidden through a Caribbean tax haven.

In an attempt to reduce his tax bill, Mourinho’s advisers appear to have fabricated more than £1m in costs run up by a British Virgin ­Islands shell company with no ­employees. They also withheld from the tax inspectors the fact that Mourinho’s family were the true owners of the shell company.

Julian Lopez Milla, a member of the Spanish parliament’s tax committee, said Mourinho’s tax case should be reopened. “I will call on the authorities to reopen the case and investigate whether Mourinho has committed the criminal offence of tax fraud,” he said. Chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee Meg Hillier said: “These reve­lations are extraordinary and warrant a close examination by the UK tax authorities.”

A spokesman for Mourinho said there could be “no suggestion whatsoever” that he had committed a criminal offence.

Earlier this year, the British government held a consultation on proposals to crack down on “enablers of tax avoidance” and to examine ways of strengthening sanctions and deterrents. It criticised tax avoidance arrangements that were “developed, marketed and facilitated by a persistent minority of promoters, advisers and other intermediaries”.

It added: “These tax avoiders undermine the public finances and place a disproportionate demand on government resource.”

The revelations about Mour­inho’s tax affairs have emerged in a leaked database containing millions of emails, documents and ­accounts.

It shows that Mourinho is one of several super-rich football stars, including the three-times world player of the year Cristiano Ron­aldo, who for many years paid little or no tax on their image-rights earnings because of highly ­aggressive tax avoidance.

Mourinho, 53, has earned more than £120m in salary since he first came to the Premier League as the Chelsea coach in 2004. He has a personal fortune of £50m, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, making him the sixth wealthiest sports star in the country.

Despite his earning so much money, his advisers have gone to extraordinary lengths to help him avoid tax on the further millions he was paid by his club and other businesses for the use of his image rights to endorse products. For years the payments were sent initially to a company in Dublin without being taxed and were then wired to a Swiss bank account in the name of a British Virgin Islands company, Koper Services SA.

Mourinho banked £1.5m tax-free from Chelsea in the Koper ­account during his first spell at the club in 2004-07. By 2014 this had swollen to £10m from his image-rights earnings. His advisers had failed to declare any of these payments to the Spanish or British authorities before both began investigations into his tax affairs.

The Sunday Times does not know how much Mourinho understood of the detail of his tax ­structures. However, his signature appears on a crucial document setting out the apparently fabricated commission sent to the Spanish tax authorities. The leaked documents show how, by claiming tax-deductible costs, his advisers greatly reduced the tax bills he subsequently had to pay. “The evidence suggests that the tax authorities were misled when con­ducting investigations into Mour­inho’s offshore scheme, which was constructed to dodge millions of pounds in tax,” Albert Sanchez-Graells, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Bristol, said.

A source at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs said it would seek evidence to determine whether to begin an investigation.

An HMRC spokesman said: “We take seriously allegations that customers or their agents may have acted dishonestly in the course of an inquiry, and can reopen closed cases if we suspect this has happened.” Mourinho’s spokesman said the manager had never been the subject of a criminal investigation or prosecution, and added that the Spanish tax authorities had confirmed that he was “fully compliant and up-to-date” with his tax obligations.

The Sunday Times