The trial against world star Shakira for tax fraud amounting to almost 14.5 million euros begins on Monday in Barcelona. The public prosecutor’s office is demanding a prison sentence of more than eight years against her.
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The 46-year-old Colombian artist was summoned at 10am (9am GMT) by a court in the Catalan metropolis, where she lived with ex-footballer Gerard Piqué for years before causing a stir last year.
However, a last-minute deal with prosecutors in which Shakira could admit guilt and pay a hefty fine in return for a stay of the trial remains possible.
The defense attorney for the “Waka Waka” or “Hips Don’t Lie” singer, who said last year that a trial was a “matter of principle” to defend his innocence, told AFP that no deal had been sealed so far with the accusation, but that this theoretically remained possible “until the last minute”.
The prosecution accuses Shakira of not paying her taxes in Spain in 2012, 2013 and 2014, when, according to him, in those years she lived in the country for more than 183 days a year, the limit from which a person is considered Taxpayers must be resident there for tax purposes.
He requested a prison sentence of eight years and two months and a fine of 23.8 million euros against him.
The singer categorically denies these allegations and her lawyers assure that even though she began a relationship with Piqué in 2011, she continued to move around the world due to her career.
Shakira claims to have only permanently settled in Barcelona in late 2014, before changing her tax residency from the Bahamas to Spain in 2015, shortly before the birth of her second child.
“The tax authorities saw that I was having a relationship with a Spanish citizen and started drooling,” she said in an interview with ELLE magazine last year.
“I don’t owe the tax office anything and I’m sure that I have enough evidence to support my case and ensure that justice rules in my favor,” said the singer, who has already paid 17.2 million euros to the tax office has paid a matter with the aim of regulating his situation.
This summer, prosecutors opened another case against the singer, who moved to Miami with her children after their separation, for another tax fraud in 2018, estimated at six million euros.
Normally, this trial is expected to last until mid-December with almost 120 witnesses.
To substantiate the accusation, tax investigators investigated the star’s private life, questioned her neighbors, checked her accounts on social networks, checked her expenses in hair salons in Barcelona or in the clinic where she was observed during her pregnancy in the city in 2012 /2013.
“Unacceptable methods” for the lawyers of Shakira, whose name appeared in the “Pandora Papers”, a massive journalistic investigation published at the end of 2021 in which several hundred figures were accused of concealing assets in offshore companies.
Shakira, a reference in Latin pop music, has recently been in the spotlight for her difficult breakup with Piqué, which she featured in the hit “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53”.
This collaboration with the Argentinian Bizarrap became a global success, which won the Latin Grammy for Song of the Year on Thursday and whose lyrics also refer to his “debt to the tax authorities”.
“The people in my team tried to convince me to change the text, but I am not a UN diplomat,” she told Spanish magazine ¡Hola! this week.
In addition to Shakira, many personalities have also had problems with the Spanish tax authorities in recent years, such as footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, who were sentenced to prison sentences of less than two years, which they did not have to serve because they had no criminal record.
Pique was convicted of tax fraud involving his image rights in 2016 and ordered to repay more than 2.1 million euros to the tax authorities.