{"id":19765,"date":"2013-02-05T16:55:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T16:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ghana-mma.com\/2013\/02\/diego-maradona-denies-italy-tax-fraud-claims\/"},"modified":"2013-02-05T16:55:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T16:55:00","slug":"diego-maradona-denies-italy-tax-fraud-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/02\/05\/diego-maradona-denies-italy-tax-fraud-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Diego Maradona denies Italy tax fraud claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"63\">\n<p>Rome(AFP) \u2013 Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona said he was no fraudster in a video put out by his lawyer on Tuesday, as the former star disputes a claim that he owes Italian tax authorities millions of euros (dollars).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am not a tax fraudster. I played football and other people signed for me,\u201d Maradona, who played for Napoli, said in a video shot at his current residence in Dubai in which he spoke Italian.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am not afraid of returning to Italy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never signed anything. The people who are really responsible are free and can walk around calmly in Naples and I can\u2019t. That\u2019s not fair,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Maradona was convicted in 2005 and ordered to pay 37.2 million euros ($50.4 million), including 23.5 million euros in interest for late payments.<\/p>\n<p>But a court in November said there had been procedural errors and ordered a new investigation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to return to Italy as a gentleman because I never stole anything from anyone,\u201d Maradona said.<\/p>\n<p>The player scored 115 goals in 259 matches for Napoli between 1984 and 1991.<\/p>\n<p>Napoli have only won the Italian title twice \u2014 in 1987 and 1990 \u2014 with Maradona starring in both campaigns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Comments are moderated. Please keep them clean and brief.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Rome(AFP) \u2013 Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona said he was no fraudster in a video put out by his lawyer on Tuesday, as the former star disputes a claim that he owes Italian tax authorities millions of euros (dollars). &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}