Five time Barcelona captain Lionel Messi along with Ballon Dor winner has revealed he contemplated leaving the club in 2013.
The Argentina international, that has been at Barcelona since he was 13 and is their all-time top scorer, said he believedbadly handled by Spain when he was investigated for tax fraud in 2013.
He had been found guilty in 2016 with his dad Jorge of defrauding the Spanish authorities of $4.2m between 2007 and 2009 over earnings gained from image rights.
Messi was given a prison sentence of 21 months and ordered to pay a fine of 2m. Afterwards he managed to exchange his sentence for a fine of $250,000, as in Spain defendants without a previous conviction are permitted to serve any sentence of under two years on probation, he didnt serve any jail time.
He had been first investigated in 2013, starting lots of of tax fraud cases against high-profile footballers from Spain such as Javier Mascherano Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcelo.
Sincerely, at that moment I thought of leaving, Messi admitted to Barcelona-based radio channel RAC1 in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
Not because of Barcelona but because I wished to leave Spain, I felt very badly treated and that I did not need to keep here any longer.
I had my doors available to a lot of clubs but I still never got a formal offer because everybody knew I needed to remain. This situation went way beyond my feelings for Barca.
Messi also suggested that the Spanish tax authorities made an example out of him as they cracked down on tax fraud following Spains financial crisis hit.
I had been the first and that is the reason why they came down really hard on me personally. They made a good example of me also revealed it was likely to be like that for everybody. It was hard because of everything that was occurring at that time, he explained.
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