She’s in deep trouble! Shakira is increasingly close to having to go to court for reasons of tax fraud. The famous singer is accused of owing the tidy sum of 14.5 million to the Spanish tax authorities. Her main defense is currently to claim that she resided in the Bahamas at the material time. A version that was not heard by the Barcelona court, which therefore rejected the Colombian’s request to drop the charges.
“It can be considered that the applicant had her habitual residence in Spain“, said in a press release the court, according to which “the documentation provided to prove that the tax residence was in another country does not appear to be sufficient“. The decision of the prosecution seals a little more the fate of the singer and dancer who should therefore indeed end up facing a judge in this case. The lawyers of the singer, mother of two children, said in a press release that “the conduct of Shakira in tax matters has always been irreproachable in all the countries in which it has had to pay its taxes“.
The prosecution accuses the singer of tax fraud in the amount of 14.5 million euros for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014. According to the prosecution, she had been living in Spain since 2011, the year in which her relationship with the FC Barcelona footballer Gerard Pique was made public, but had maintained his tax residence in the Bahamas Islands, considered a tax haven, until 2015. In addition, the name of Shakira is among those cited in the Pandora Papers, a vast investigation published at the end of 2021 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, accusing several hundred personalities of having concealed assets in offshore companies, in particular for the purposes of tax evasion.
While awaiting her judgment, the beautiful Latina has done wonders on the side of Cannes where she attended the presentation of the film Elvisrealized by Baz Luhrmann. The star walked the red carpet wearing a stunning black slit dress and nylon gloves (see slideshow). Not sure that this attracts the sympathy of the judges…