Shakira avoided trial in a tax fraud case by making a confession. Now she is criticizing the Spanish tax authorities.
In November 2023, Colombian pop singer Shakira (47) reached an out-of-court settlement with the Spanish public prosecutor’s office in a tax fraud case. She admitted tax evasion, although she had denied it in the past. With her admission, she avoided the prison sentence of up to eight years demanded by the public prosecutor. In addition, a fine of 23.8 million euros was on the table. Shakira was to answer for tax fraud amounting to 14.5 million euros. The musician was ultimately sentenced to three years’ probation and a fine of 7.3 million euros. The musician is now looking back on the proceedings and making serious allegations against the Spanish authorities.
“There is more truth about me in this little article than in anything published in 2023,” explains the singer. “The tax officials who judged me may not think it was very good, but I honestly don’t care. I didn’t write it for them.” The most frustrating thing in the past year was “that a state institution seemed more interested in publicly burning me at the stake than listening to my reasons. Well, I think the time has come to state them.”
Shakira: “Made me a tax evader”
In the averted trial, the ex-partner of Gerard Piqué (37) was accused of not paying taxes amounting to around 14.5 million euros, which she should have paid in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The public prosecutor claimed that the Grammy winner had spent more than half of this period in Spain, although her official place of residence was the Bahamas. This meant that she would also have been obliged to pay taxes in Spain.
“It was clear to me from the beginning that the tax authorities, with their fabricated story, were confusing and manipulating two completely different intentions: on the one hand, the desire to settle in a country and, on the other, the desire to make a relationship developing in that country a success,” Shakira writes in her post. “They swapped one for the other to make me a tax citizen since 2011 and create obligations that did not exist.”
She continues: “In 2011, I wanted my relationship with Gerard Piqué, who was then tied to Spain for professional reasons, to progress further. But the trips to Spain brought many complications for me because they forced me to be far from my workplaces.” Whenever she returned, she did so solely so that the relationship could develop. “If it was an American singer who had fallen in love with a Spanish woman and visited her regularly, I don’t think the tax office would have assumed that he had any intention of putting down roots. There is a structural machismo that takes it for granted that a woman can only follow a man, even if she doesn’t like it, and that has survived in parts of the state bureaucracy.”
The musician emphasises: “A person who spends their time travelling cannot have the intention of being tax resident in a place just because the person they are currently in a relationship with lives there. It would be the same as thinking that a tourist passing through Ibiza must become tax resident just because she had an affair there.”
Conviction before trial?
The singer stresses that she has always fulfilled her obligations. Her finances have already been examined by many institutions in other countries and in all this time there has never been the slightest hint of illegality, “while an inspector general of the Spanish tax authority took the liberty of criminalising me on a television programme before the trial had even taken place. Can we trust an institution to respect our presumption of innocence when it condemns us publicly before we are sentenced?”
The tax authorities want to expose people by “intimidating them, threatening them with prison, endangering the peace of mind of our children and pressuring us to break. The public was made to believe that I had not paid my taxes when in reality I had paid much more than I owed.”
She wanted to protect her children
The first reason she is now going public with the post is her children. “I want to leave them the legacy of a woman who spoke her mind calmly and at her own time, when she felt it was necessary and not when she was forced to. I want them to know that I made the decisions I made to protect them, to be there for them and to get on with my life.” I want her sons to understand “that my love for Spain and my dear Spanish friends and family still endures. But sometimes a commitment to the truth is more important than one’s own convenience. If I made the decision to make a pact for my children back then, I am now making the decision to speak out because my conscience tells me to.”
After the trial was averted, Shakira had already made her confession. The second reason for the newspaper article was her need to “write my own story”. She wanted to get her life back, “so that no one writes my story for me. Just like I sing my songs to live in peace again, to turn the tide.”
Most recently, in May, a court dropped another charge of tax fraud against the musician because there was no evidence of a crime. She was accused of not paying around 6.6 million euros in taxes for 2018.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
