NAVI’s Aleksib gets four-month suspended sentence

Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen, NAVI’s in-game leader, has been sentenced by Finland’s District Court of Itä-Uusimaa to four months of suspended imprisonment for gross tax fraud. The court found that he failed to report €53,000 in income in his 2020 tax return.

The case concerned Virolainen’s share of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major sticker revenue earned in 2019, when he played for ENCE. He competed at the IEM Katowice and StarLadder Berlin Majors that year. The undeclared income resulted in a €28,000 difference in his taxable income.

The suspended sentence means Virolainen will not serve immediate prison time if he complies with the court’s probation conditions.

His defense argued that he believed the relevant taxes had already been paid and that he had failed to report the income because he did not know it was required. The court rejected that explanation, citing the financial benefit he received and his earlier statement that he would review his tax documents at home.

The court also found that Virolainen’s age did not excuse the omission. He was 22 and legally an adult when the income went unreported. The court considered it unlikely that he had missed the amount on his prefilled tax return because it represented close to one-third of his total income in 2019.

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