Lionel Messi and his father Jorge have filed a “corrective payment” with the Spanish authorities amid allegations of tax fraud.
The pair are alleged to have filed incorrect tax returns between 2006 and 2009 and a court located near Barcelona confirmed on Wednesday that a payment of just over €5 million has been received.
The statement added that the payment meant there was little chance of Messi and his father withholding further monies “during the legal process of a pending tax fraud trial”.
A court hearing has been set for September 17, although Messi’s lawyers have requested this be postponed due to prior commitments that same day, the statement added
The Argentine World Player of the Year and his father, who both denied wrongdoing, allegedly hid more than four million euros by filing incomplete returns for the years 2006 to 2009.
The sale of Messi's image rights had been hidden using a complex web of shell companies in Uruguay, Belize, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, the prosecutor's office for tax crimes in Catalonia said.
"I never take care of that stuff myself and neither does my father," the 26-year-old player said in July.
"We have our lawyers and our wealth managers to take care of that and we trust them and they will sort this out," he added.
"The truth is that I don't have a clue about all this and that is why we have people taking care of it."
Messi has been resident in Barcelona since 2000 and gained Spanish citizenship in 2005.
He is one of the world's highest-paid athletes and earns just over $20 million a season in wages and bonuses, according to Forbes magazine.
He also pulls in some $21 million in endorsements from partners including Adidas, PepsiCo, P&G and Turkish Airlines and is 10th on Forbes's latest list of top-earning athletes.
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