Former Real Madrid and Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho accepted a one-year prison sentence for defrauding the Spanish state of 3.3 million euros ($3.77 million), a Spanish court filing showed Tuesday.
However, the Portuguese will not serve any jail time and will instead pay a fine. He follows in the footsteps of his Portuguese countryman Cristiano Ronaldo who last month received a fine of $21.6 million as punishment in his own Spanish fraud case.
Mourinho and his defense team had agreed with the tax ministry to exchange the 12-month prison sentence with a daily fine of 250 euros for 24 months. That is equivalent to 182,500 euros, as under Spanish law jail terms less than two years can be served under probation.
The court filing said Mourinho leased his image rights to companies based in the British Virgin Islands and Ireland in 2004, but left those earnings out of his tax returns from 2011 and 2012 "with the aim of obtaining illicit profits." At that time he was coach of Real Madrid and a fiscal resident in Spain.
As well as the one-year prison sentence to be served under probation, the 56-year-old has been fined 1.9 million euros, equivalent to 60 percent of the amount defrauded, as well as 121,764 euros in interest.
Mourinho is one of the most successful coaches in modern European soccer, winning league titles with Chelsea, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Porto. He also won the Champions League in 2004 with Porto and in 2010 with Inter Milan.
He was sacked from his last job in December by Manchester United, after the English Premier League club endured their worst start to a season for 28 years under his leadership.