(Barcelona) A Spanish court announced Thursday that it had closed a second proceeding for tax fraud opened against the global star Shakira, who has therefore finished with legal hassles in the country where she resided for a long time.
Following the prosecutor’s request, announced on Wednesday, this court on the outskirts of Barcelona recognized that the Colombian artist had committed “irregularities” in her 2018 tax return, with a shortfall of around 6 million euros for the Spanish tax authorities.
But “irregularities are not enough for a (criminal) offense against the tax administration to be characterized”, estimated the magistrate responsible for the case, according to which the interpreter of Hips don’t lie did not have “the desire to evade taxes”.
The prosecution, for its part, ruled that there was “no sufficient evidence” to criminally prosecute Shakira in this case.
This court announced in July that it had opened this procedure against the singer, suspected then of having used companies domiciled in tax havens to avoid paying all of her income and wealth tax in 2018.
In order to show her desire to regularize her situation with the tax authorities, Shakira paid 6.6 million euros to the courts in August, a sum corresponding to the 6 million owed to the tax authorities, increased by late payment interest. and regularization fees.
Shakira still remains in the sights of the Spanish tax authorities for the year 2011, but this procedure is only administrative and not judicial.
A trial already avoided in November
The singer had already avoided an embarrassing trial at the end of 2023 before the Barcelona court as part of the first prosecutions for tax fraud.
The prosecution accused her in this separate case of not having paid her taxes in Spain in 2012, 2013 and 2014 even though she had lived in those years more than 183 days per year in the country, a threshold beyond which a person is considered a tax resident there.
He had requested a sentence of eight years and two months in prison and a fine of 23.8 million euros against him.
The singer for her part categorically denied these accusations, ensuring that, even if she had started a relationship in 2011 with ex-FC Barcelona player Gerard Pique, she had continued to move around the world in those years. , because of his career.
She claimed to have only established herself permanently in Barcelona at the end of 2014, before transferring her tax residence from the Bahamas to Spain in 2015, just before the birth of her second child.
Summoned to court in November to stand trial, she sealed a last-minute agreement with the prosecution and thus avoided a trial promising an unpacking of her private life.
The “Waka Waka” singer was ordered, as part of this agreement, to pay a fine of more than 7.3 million euros corresponding to “50%” of the amount of the fraud. She had already paid 17.45 million euros to the tax authorities to regularize her situation in this matter.
Shakira –– who saw her name appear in the “Pandora Papers”, a vast journalistic investigation accusing several hundred personalities of having concealed assets in extraterritorial companies – separated from Gerard Piqué in 2022 and has since settled down with his children in Miami.
reference: www.lapresse.ca