The trial against Shakira for tax fraud begins this Monday in the Barcelona Court pending whether a last-minute agreement is reached that prevents the hearing from taking place. The Colombian singer faces a sentence of eight years in prison and a fine of 23.8 million euros for allegedly having defrauded 14.5 million euros corresponding to income and wealth taxes during the years 2012 and 2014. In the Palace of Justice, several rooms have been set up to follow the trial and there are almost two hundred accredited journalists to follow the twelve scheduled sessions in which 117 witnesses will appear with the intention of exposing Shakira’s life and demonstrating whether between 2012 and 2014 she lived in Spain and therefore had to pay taxes to the Spanish Treasury. However, everything remains at the expense of a possible pact. Although Shakira said she would no longer negotiate with the Prosecutor’s Office after several failed attempts, in the last week contacts with the accusations have intensified to explore the possibility of reaching an agreement that would avoid holding the trial and ensure a conviction. minimum. The outcome will be known shortly before the trial begins.
Shakira is summoned to the Barcelona Court at ten in the morning and it will be before that time when the singer’s lawyers and the accusations – Prosecutor’s Office, State Attorney’s Office and the Generalitat – will speed up the negotiations and decide whether to reach an agreement. compliance or face trial. The singer must also appear before the court and make public that she ratifies an agreement in which she recognizes the facts, accepts a minimum sentence and agrees to pay a million-dollar fine. When the case broke out, the artist already paid 17 million euros, which were insufficient for the Treasury to settle. The Prosecutor’s Office is demanding a sentence of eight years in prison and a fine of 23.8 million not only for having defrauded the Treasury of 14.5 million euros but for having created a corporate network in tax havens – including The Bahamas – that served, according to the accusation, to hide their income and assets and avoid paying taxes.
Shakira, if the trial is held, will only attend the first session. She has authorization from the court to be absent for the rest of the days and she is scheduled to testify today, respond only to her lawyers and then leave. The twelve planned sessions will focus on whether Shakira lived in Barcelona at that time or whether she only came from time to time and was passing through. The Prosecutor’s Office believes that the singer lived in a house in Esplugues that she bought with Piqué and considers that she spent more than half of the year in Spanish territory. In fact, she was only absent to travel to the United States where she participated in the edition of the program La Voz (The Voice). The public ministry has counted the days she spent in North America. She stayed 61 days in 2012; in 2013, 118; and in 2014, 117 days. The rest was spent in Spain.
Shakira denies that she had a fraudulent intention and recalls that she has been a resident of the Bahamas since 2004 when she moved to the island seeking “the privacy she needed, given the media exposure to which she was subjected.” She highlights that since 2007 she has been a permanent resident in the Bahamas and until she moved her residence to Spain in 2015, she always complied with tax obligations there. “Shakira has complied impeccably in the more than 20 jurisdictions in which she has paid taxes, and there has never been a persecution with such a lack of reasonableness and so fierce on the part of the treasury, nor such obvious use of media and reputational pressure. as a collection mechanism,” he said in a statement.
