Stoney-faced Dani Alves walks out of prison after paying €1MILLION bail to end his 14 months inside – but Barcelona legend faces court visit every week as he appeals r@pe conviction | HO
Dani Alves has been released from prison this afternoon after depositing a €1million (£850,000) bail bond.

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 was freed just before the expected time of around 5pm local time.

As part of his bail conditions, Alves will also have to visit the court once-a-week to keep his freedom.

He had been told he could leave Brians 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.

Dani Alves has been released from prison after 14 months inside as he appeals his rape conviction

The former Barcelona player was escorted by his lawyer Ines Guardiola on Monday afternoon

The former player had previously ran into difficulty attempting to pay his sky-high bail fee

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 £47m.

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 €9.2m (£7.9m) after his tax lawyer Fernando Mota won four cases against Spain’s tax agency.

The hearing to determine Alves 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 team-mate 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 £4m mansion in Esplugues de LLobregat a 25-minute drive west of Barcelona’s city centre.

His lawyer had previously claimed that her client was ‘broke’ and had a ‘negative bank balance’

Alves will have to adhere to conditions set by the court in order to have his freedom on bail

The player left Brians 2 prison while protestors were taking a stand following the death of one of cooks at the Mas d’Enric prison murdered at the hands of an inmate,

It was built in 2010 when he was still married to his ex-wife Dinorah Santana before he met and married Tenerife-born model Joana Sanz.

Sanz revealed last year she had demanded a divorce after Alves admitted for the first time to having sex with the woman he was found guilty of raping, but claimed as he still does that the relations were consensual.

The 31-year-old brunette later said the divorce had been put on hold and she gave evidence on Alves’ behalf at his trial from February 5 to 7.

His ex-wife Santana is among those to have spoken out against Alves being granted release from prison on bail.

‘There are times when you will have to share the table with Judas, without that taking away your peace. Well, me today,’ she wrote on Instagram.

Santana, the mother of his two children, had initially said she was standing by him and insisted he would never commit the crime he was arrested for.

The sports agent later claimed she felt she had been ‘used’ and told Spanish television: ‘For me, he doesn’t exist. For me, he has died.’

The footballer made several attempts before his conviction to get bail, but they were turned down partly on the basis he was a flight risk.

Dani Alves was granted release on bail while he awaits his final sentence after being found guilty of rape

Alves, who has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, was unable to pay his bail last week

The former Barcelona star has now paid his bail and is expected to be released on Monday

One of the main arguments put forward by prosecutors opposing his pre-trial bail requests was that he could flee Spain and make it to Brazil and the South American country does not extradite its citizens sentenced abroad.

The jail sentence he received, considered lenient by some critics, 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 Tuesday’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.

Neymar Santos, the father of Brazil star Neymar Jr, denied reports his family were set to pay Alves’ bail

Alves’ ex-wife Dinorah Santana has spoken out against the former Brazil international, declaring the decision to grant him bail was ‘taking away her peace’

Alves has been forced to stay at the Brians 2 Prison in Barcelona, where he has been held since January 2023.

‘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.’

In a withering attack on the footballer’s actions they said that even if she had got intimate with Alves before accompanying him voluntarily to the toilet, it didn’t mean she was saying “yes” to sex.

‘It didn’t give him carte blanche to carry out the sex attack that occurred afterwards’, they insisted.

‘Consent during sex should always be given before or even during the practice of sex, in such a way that a person can agree to sexual relations up until a certain point and express their opposition to continue.’

Alves, who became the oldest player to represent Brazil at the World Cup in December 2022 in Qatar, was ordered to stand trial last November.

Dani Alves’ ex, Joana Sanz (left) revealed she had filed for divorce last year after the accusations against Alves came to light

Initially it was reported he had been accused of putting his hands down a woman’s underwear inside a VIP toilet at Sutton nightclub before it emerged his victim was saying she had been raped.

He was sacked by Mexican side UNAM Pumas following his arrest in Barcelona at the start of last year after he flew back to the Catalan capital to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.

Judges said when his previous bail requests were turned down that his victim’s version of events was coherent and pointed out Alves had changed his story several times as the evidence authorities had built up against him emerged.

Alves claimed before his arrest he had never met his female accuser but ended up backtracking after being held