The car, an Audi Q7, purchased in 2011, he had sold in 2016, but – as unfortunately happens to many people – after years, in 2021, the Revenue Agency had knocked on his door to contest the failure to pay an old tax which, between penalties, interest and notification costs, amounted to over 3 thousand euros. And for the Danish footballer Simon Kjaer, captain of his national team, until a few days ago a defender for Milan and between 2008 and 2010 also for Palermo, the problem in front of that request for payment was certainly not that of money (1.6 million his income in 2023), but of principle: before then he had in fact never received any communication, even if – as later ascertained with an access to the documents – he appeared to have signed two notifications delivered to Viale del Fante, headquarters of Palermo Calcio, when however he was in Turkey, Spain and Denmark for work reasons.
He never delivered the tax bill and forged the signature: messenger sentenced after 14 years
This is how, on December 16, 2021, he filed a complaint with the Rome police headquarters – which then forwarded the documents to the Palermo prosecutor’s office – causing GF and RG of Serco srl of the Consorzio Stabile Olimpo, the contractor for the management of notifications of tax collection documents, to end up on trial for forgery. The two had in fact written on the documents that they had found Kjaer in Viale del Fante and that he had refused the tax bills. For the two defendants, defended by lawyers Igor Runfola and Giuseppina Aronica, the statute of limitations has now arrived: the forgeries date back to 2015 and 2016 and the crime is subject to a 7 and a half year statute of limitations. The footballer joined the civil action and the sentence was issued by the judge of the third section of the single-judge court, Emanuele Nicosia.
The story of the former Rosanero unites him with many “normal” citizens who unfortunately run into the same problems. Luckier than him, at least with justice, as he had told PalermoToday just over a week ago, it was a citizen of Partinico, who had also reported a messenger of the former Serit and who, even after 14 years, had managed to definitively obtain a one-year sentence.
It all started on October 25, 2021, when Kjaer received the tax assessment notice relating to the old car tax from the Palermo provincial office of the Revenue Agency, with the request to pay 3,091.40 euros. He then accessed the documents and discovered only at that moment the existence of three notices linked to the 2021 tax assessment notice with related notifications in Viale del Fante on November 21, 2015, January 22, 2016 and September 2, 2021, two of which were “rejected”. Dates on which the footballer had certainly not been in Palermo for a while. He therefore could not have been the person who had, according to the notifiers, rejected the notices. Hence the complaint.
The two defendants had been identified and had ended up under investigation. The preliminary hearing had then been set and on March 14, the preliminary hearing judge Claudio Bencivinni had sent them to trial, rejecting the defense’s hypothesis according to which the crime was now time-barred. At the first hearing, which was held a few days ago in court, the lawyers raised the same issue and this time the judge accepted their thesis, declaring that no action should be taken against the defendants due to the statute of limitations.
