An appeals court has acquitted former Barcelona and Brazil full-back Dani Alves of sexual assault and overturned a four-and-half-year prison sentence.
Alves, 41, was sentenced in February 2024 for an alleged sexual assault at a Barcelona nightclub in December 2022. He was released on bail in March 2024 while all sides awaited the outcome of all the appeals submitted against the initial ruling.
The High Court of Justice of Catalonia has allowed Alves’ appeal after a panel of four judges deemed the initial conviction contained “inaccuracies”.
The appeals panel consisted of judges Maria Angels Vivas, Roser Bach, Maria Jesus Manzano and Manuel Alvarez, who reasoned the initial ruling contained “a series of gaps, inaccuracies, inconsistencies and contradictions regarding the facts, the legal assessment and its consequences”.
The court dismissed two appeals from the prosecution; the public prosecution’s office had sought the partial annulment of the sentence and an increased sentence of nine years, and a private prosecution had sought an increased sentence of 12 years.
Alves had been released from prison in March after his defence deposited his €1million bail ($1.08m at current exchange rates). Bail had been set as a request from Alves’ defence while all the sides waited on the appeals outcome.
As part of his bail conditions, Alves was not permitted to leave the country and had to surrender his Spanish and Brazilian passports to Spanish authorities.
Before being released on bail, he had spent the previous 14 months in the Brians 2 prison in Catalonia.
Alves was arrested by local police in January 2023 as part of an investigation into an alleged sexual assault at a nightclub in Barcelona.
The Spanish public prosecutor’s office alleged that Alves sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman at the Sutton nightclub. He repeatedly denied the charges against him.