Dani Alves

According to reports a Spanish court on Thursday found former Barcelona and Brazil footballer Dani Alves guilty of raping a woman in a Spain nightclub.

The court also ordered that Alves pay €150,000 ($162,990) to the victim, as Alves maintained the sex was consensual.

Catalonia’s top court said in a statement that; “The sentence considers that it has been proven that the victim did not consent, and that there is evidence, in addition to the testimony of the plaintiff, to consider the rape proven.”

Alves, 40, was first arrested in January 2023 after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman in the bathroom of an upscale Barcelona nightclub in the early hours of Dec. 31, 2022.

He had remained in preventive pre-trial prison in Spain ever since, with a judge turning down regular requests for bail and deeming him a flight risk.

The victim’s lawyer David Saenz told reporters outside the courthouse that; “We are satisfied as the sentence recognises what we’ve been saying all along: that the victim was telling the truth and that she suffered.”