Alves was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in February of last year for violating a young woman in the VIP bathroom of a Barcelona nightclub on December 31, 2022.
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A Spanish court of appeal canceled the former international footballer in Brazil, Dani Alves, the conviction of rape, arguing that his trial was marked by “gaps” and “inaccuracies” on Friday.
Alves was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in February of last year for violating a young woman in the VIP bathroom of a Barcelona nightclub on December 31, 2022.
The 41 -year -old man, who won the Champions League three times with Barcelona, was released from prison last March while waiting for his call after posting the deposit of one million euros ($ 1.1 million) set by the court.
The Court of Appeal said that his four judges had “unanimously” “the player’s appeal and” canceled “his conviction.
The court also rejected the appeal filed by the prosecutors, who asked for a more serious prison sentence of nine years.
Alves’s trial contained “a series of gaps, inaccuracies, inconsistencies and contradictions concerning the facts, legal evaluation and its consequences,” said the court in his decision.
During the trial, the woman, who testified behind a screen to protect her identity, said that Alves had violently forced her to have sex despite the begging to let her go, making her “anxiety and terror”, according to the prosecutors present for her declaration.
Alves testified that his sexual meeting with the woman was consensual and denied hitting the woman and catching her hair.
“I am not this kind of man, I am not violent,” he said in court after his defense lawyer asked him if he had forced him to have sex.
“If she wanted to leave, she could have left, she didn’t have to be there,” he added.
His lawyers argued during the trial that the victim had been “stuck” to the player while dancing in the nightclub.
Alves initially denied having known his accuser in a television interview, but later admitted having had sex with her after video surveillance images were emerging that the pair entered the toilets of the nightclub.
He told the newspaper La Vanguardia that he had lied because he was afraid that his wife would leave him.
The lower court also demanded that Alves paid 150,000 euros in compensation to his accuser and ordered him to serve five years of probation after finishing his prison sentence.
But the Court of Appeal said that given that with the anutation of its conviction, these “precautionary measures” had been abandoned.
Alves was a central part of a Barcelona team, crowned the liga champions six times – and won 126 selections for Brazil, winning Copa America twice.
He also won the titles of the European League with the Italian giants of Juventus and the French outfit Paris Saint Germain.
At the time of his arrest, he was contracted at the Mexican club Pumas Unam – he was dismissed shortly after.
Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, criticized the court’s decision to give a deposit to Alves, saying that at the time that money “could not cancel the crime that a man commits by raping a woman”.
