The Barcelona Court of Appeal announced Friday that it had overturned the four-and-a-half-year prison sentence of former FC Barcelona star Dani Alves for the 2022 rape of a young woman in a Barcelona nightclub.

The former Brazilian international's conviction, handed down in February 2024, was marked by "a series of shortcomings, imprecisions, inconsistencies and contradictions regarding the facts, the legal assessment and its consequences," the court said in a statement.

The court's four judges therefore "unanimously" accepted the appeal filed by the former player's defense and "overturned" his conviction, according to the press release. They also rejected the prosecution's appeal, which called for a harsher sentence of nine years in prison, the same source said.

Dani Alves, now 41, was sentenced on February 22, 2024, to four and a half years in prison and ordered to pay €150,000 to his victim. The court also imposed five years of supervised release upon his release and a nine-and-a-half-year ban on approaching his victim.

With the annulment of his conviction, all these "precautionary measures" are abandoned, the Barcelona Court of Appeal specified.

The events for which the former Barça and PSG player was being tried took place on the night of December 30-31, 2022, when the former right-back was with a friend in a VIP area of the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona.

According to the indictment, Dani Alves, who had just returned from the World Cup in Qatar, offered champagne to the victim, her cousin and a friend and then invited her to follow him into an adjoining room with a toilet.

He allegedly exhibited a "violent attitude" toward the young woman, who experienced a "situation of anxiety and terror," according to the public prosecutor. These accusations were contested by the player, who denied any rape during the trial, claiming that the young woman had danced "close" to him.

Alves' defense, however, was weakened by his numerous changes of version: after claiming never to have met the complainant, he ended up admitting during the investigation to a sexual relationship, but according to him, it was consensual.

The footballer was finally released from prison pending the appeal decision a month after his conviction, on March 25, 2024, after 14 months behind bars, in exchange for a bail of one million euros.