Dani Alves is reportedly set to be released from prison this afternoon by depositing a €1million (£850,000) bail bond over his rape conviction.
According to Mail Online, the footballer is also understood to have complied with the other orders of the three judges who said he could leave jail despite his recent rape conviction by handing in his Spanish and Brazilian passports.
The 40-year-old father-of-two is now expected to be freed for the first time in 14 months around 5pm local time.
He was told he could leave Brian 2 Prison near Barcelona last Wednesday after winning his bid to appeal his four-and-a-half-year jail sentence from the comfort of his own home rather than a cell.
But his failure to get together the bail bond meant he remained behind bars over the weekend.
Alves’ lawyer Ines Guardiola has said the Brazilian has two bank accounts in Spain, one with no balance and the other with €51,000 (£44,000), with a judicial seizure of €50,000 (£43,000).
Guardiola claimed last year that her client ‘is broke’ and has a ‘negative bank balance of £17,000′, despite reportedly once having a fortune of £47million.
Sport reported that Alves’ accounts in Brazil have also been blocked due to problems with his ex-wife Dinorah Santana.
Alves, however, is expected to receive €9.2 million (£7.9 million) after his tax lawyer Fernando Mota won four cases against Spain’s tax agency.
The hearing to determine Alves’s bail had noted the 40-year-old was set to receive ‘a large sum of money’ back from the treasury, but he has not yet received the funds.
Brazilian teammate Neymar’s dad had been expected to help Alves pay the money to secure his freedom, but he issued a statement denying he would hand over any cash after coming under political pressure in his homeland.
Alves, convicted on February 22 of raping a 23-year-old woman in the toilet of upmarket Barcelona nightclub Sutton after a three-day trial earlier the same month, is set to spend his first night of freedom since January 20 last year at his £ 4 million mansion in Esplugues de Llobregat a 25-minute drive west of Barcelona’s city centre.
The jail sentence he received was far less than the nine years public prosecutors demanded and the 12 years Alves’ female accuser wanted if he was convicted.
Prosecutors have appealed the decision to release him on bail, but the appeal is not set to affect today’s expected release.
Alves protested his innocence on February 7 after taking the stand on the last day of his three-day trial, saying the sex he had with his 23-year-old female accuser was consensual and insisting he would never hurt anyone.
The woman he was found guilty of raping insisted he had forced himself on her after hitting her when she gave her evidence in court behind a screen.
The three trial judges confirmed in a 61-page written ruling released after Alves learnt his sentence they had taken into account as a ‘mitigating factor’ his pre-payment of the €150,000 (£128,000) he was ordered to give his victim as compensation.
They concluded she had danced with Alves before going voluntarily to a toilet next to Sutton’s VIP area the footballer had entered moments earlier in what they described as an apparent ‘prior agreement’ to ‘be with him in a more intimate space.’
But outlining what they ruled had been proven and had contributed to them convicting Alves, they added: ‘He tried to penetrate his victim by making use of his greater strength and throwing her on the floor and making her bang her knee.
‘The victim asked Dani Alves to let her leave, making it clear she wanted to get out of there, but he didn’t let her.
‘Finding herself in that situation, in that small toilet without any option of being able to leave because Mr Alves was preventing her with the violent attitude he was demonstrating, she felt shocked and unable to react or breathe properly given the situation of anguish and terror she was experiencing.’
They added of the toilet rape: ‘Using his physical strength and overcoming his victim’s opposition, Alves bent her over the toilet and raped his victim until he ejaculated inside her, without using a condom and without her consent.’
