He had assured that he “never wanted to defraud the tax authorities”, despite being convicted last September 11th for money laundering, tax fraud, abuse of company assets and omission of accounting records. Djibril Cissea former striker for Lazio among others, had been sentenced to one year of suspended prison and a fine of 100,000 euros.
Today, in Bastia, the sentence was reduced to eight months in prison (with suspended sentence) plus the payment of a fine of 20,000 euros. This is the final sentence: no more fraud and money laundering, only the crimes of abuse of company assets and omission of accounting records remain, for which Cissé blamed the accounting firm that managed his company’s practices.
In the crosshairs of justice is a joint-stock company (SASU) based in Furiani (Upper Corsica), Cissé’s place of residence. Although the company was placed in compulsory administrative liquidation in 2020, the associated current account remained 550,000 euros in debt. The investigation believes that he did not declare this sum to the tax authorities and this constitutes a crime. The investigation also revealed a tax debt of 230,000 euros due to failure to declare VAT. “I find it very difficult to be associated today with the words ‘fraud’, ‘money laundering’, ‘misuse of corporate assets’…”, he said.