Spain’s public prosecutor has recommended a jail sentence totalling 18 months and fines of more than €2m for Lionel Messi’s father Jorge in a tax fraud case.

The prosecutor reiterated that Lionel Messi should not have to face charges for defrauding the state of €4.2m for the years 2007-2009 as his father was in charge of his finances.

However, the court overseeing the case already rejected Messi’s appeal last year and ruled that he could have approved the creation of a web of shell companies that were apparently used to evade taxes due on income from his image rights.

Revenue had been hidden using companies in Uruguay, Belize, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Messi and his father paid €5 million to the tax authorities as a “corrective payment” after they were formally charged in June 2013.

Messi is 10th on Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s highest-earning athletes over the past decade with income of $350m.