AN EGYPTIAN court has sentenced footballer Mohamed Aboutrika to a year in prison for tax evasion – or the option to pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds (£865) to have the sentence suspended.
The verdict, handed down by the Cairo misdemeanour court, was delivered in absentia.
Under the law, the verdict can be appealed and if Aboutrika returns to Egypt, he would have to stand a new trial.
The court said Aboutrika failed to pay 710,000 Egyptian pounds (£30,500) in taxes on income from advertising deals with soft drinks and telecommunications companies in 2008 and 2009.
Egypt froze Aboutrika’s assets in 2015 and placed him on a no-fly list in 2017 over allegations of links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which authorities have labelled a terrorist organisation.
The Brotherhood emerged as the country’s dominant political force after Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising but was later purged in 2013, when the army, led by general-turned-president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, overthrew Mohammed Morsi, the country’s divisive president.
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