Neymar fined £31.3M for tax evasion
We also round up news from the last day of this year's WCOOP, with both Shaun Deeb and Jason Mercier poised to make a massive final table.
Neymar fined for hiding Barca transfer fee
It emerged in the British mainstream press late last week that footballing phenomenon Neymar has been accused of tax evasion and had £31.3M in assets frozen by the Brazilian government.
The 23-year old, who recently signed a sponsorship deal with industry leaders PokerStars, is believed to have omitted £10.5M of the money he received for his 2013 Santos to Barcelona transfer from his personal accounts.
Former Barcelona president Sandro Rosell claimed the club only paid €57.1M for the young Brazilian, but his successor in Josep Maria Bartomeu later confessed the sum was actually closer to €86M after "additional payments were made to the player and his family".
The judge ruled to freeze assets worth three times the amount in question "for security reasons and to cover potential interest and fines". The frozen assets in question were associated with three companies Neymar shares control over with his father.
Deeb and Mercier vying for 8-game glory
The final starting day of this year's World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) may be over, but there's still plenty of action to come with two of the schedule's biggest events winding down today and tomorrow.
First up, the mammoth $10,300 buy-in 8-game, which has now played down from its 91 starters to a final 11.
Among those brave survivers sit a host of the game's most frightening talents, including serial COOP winner Shaun Deeb (4th), Mike 'goleafsgoeh' Leah (5th), SCOOP player of the year Jason Mercier (7th), Brian 'aba20' Townsend (9th), four-time WCOOP champion Dan 'djk123' Kelly (10th), and George 'jorj95' Lind (11th).
Currently leading the race for the $247,975 top prize is former online high stakes pro Andrew 'ClockWyze' Pantling. The Canadian boasts a 305,000 chip stack, and has over 25% of the chips in play.
Where the $10M guaranteed Main Event is concerned, we're still a long way off a final table. The action paused last night with 246 of the 1,995 runners remaining, three places from the money. Norway's 'EspenasApart' is currently out in front with a 1.4M chip stack; Aeron 'aejones' Jones is one of 12 other players in the chasing pack over the seven-figure chip mark.
The 8-game action resumes today at 17:30 BST, with the Main Event kicking off again two hours later at 19:30 BST.
Related news:
- Neymar signs with PokerStars
- Jason Mercier is the SCOOP player of the series
- Deeb takes WCOOP gold in 2015
