(Barcelona) Shakira should once again avoid a trial for tax fraud in Spain, the prosecution having requested on Wednesday the dismissal of proceedings against the global star, almost six months after an agreement with prosecutors in a separate procedure.
“The prosecution considers that there is insufficient evidence” to criminally prosecute the Colombian artist, as part of this procedure relating to the year 2018, he indicated in a press release.
A court on the outskirts of Barcelona announced in July that it had launched proceedings against the interpreter of Hips don’t liesuspected of having used companies domiciled in tax havens to avoid paying all of her income and wealth tax that year.
The singer paid 6.6 million euros in August to the courts to show her desire to regularize her situation with the tax authorities. A sum corresponding to the amount owed to the tax authorities, increased by late payment interest and regularization costs.
The desire of the prosecution to close the case must still be approved by the court, but it a priori removes the prospect of a trial and a heavy fine for the singer.
A trial already avoided in November
Shakira, implicated on multiple occasions by the Spanish tax authorities, has already avoided an embarrassing trial at the end of 2023 before the Barcelona court as part of a separate procedure.
The prosecution then accused her 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, the threshold beyond which a person is there. considered a tax resident.
The prosecution 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 singer of Waka Waka had been 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 companies offshore – however, still remains in the sights of the Spanish tax authorities for the year 2011.
The singer separated from Gerard Piqué in 2022 and has since settled with her children in Miami.