Shakira has accepted a last-minute agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office and the private accusations brought by the State Attorney’s Office and the Generalitat; thus avoiding trial for the tax fraud case and imprisonment. In an appearance of just ten minutes at the Barcelona Court, the Colombian artist has accepted a fine of 7.8 million euros by acknowledging before the court that she defrauded the Treasury of 14.5 million between 2012 and 2014.
The Colombian artist issued an extensive statement detailing the reasons for her decision, which she made essentially for her two children, Milan and Sasha, the result of her relationship with Gerard Piqué. She also dedicated the only words that the singer has said regarding the case to them. It was through her Instagram Stories, with a very clear and forceful message: “A wolf like me always chooses family.”
Along with her statement, the singer shared her speech at the Latin Grammy Awards, whose awards she also dedicated to children. “I want to dedicate it to my children, because I have promised them that I am going to be happy, that they are going to have a mother who is going to laugh with all her laughter, because they deserve it,” said the singer, who took the opportunity to make a whole statement of intents.
“I’m already thinking about what’s to come, about the songs I’m going to write, about the tours I’m about to do. Because as a friend says, there is nothing in the past, you only remember the future,” he concluded. the singer, visibly moved.
The singer thus closes the long confrontation with the Tax Agency with the pact, which she herself had previously signed, along with the accusations. An agreement that involves the payment of 7.3 million euros in fines, far from the 23.7 million that the Prosecutor’s Office initially requested for the singer, and reduces the eight years in prison that the public ministry proposed for the performer to three. , for six crimes against the public treasury.
The singer wanted to make it clear that if she accepts this pact, through a legal process that her representatives considered they would have “won” over the years, it has been for the good of her children and her career.
“I felt ready to face a trial and defend my innocence,” the singer insists in her statement, after remembering that she had “two options, to continue fighting until the end,” mortgaging her peace of mind and that of her children, her career and of the things you like, or close this chapter of your life “looking forward.”
In that sense, she has confessed that her own children have asked her to reach an agreement, so she has opted to focus on the most “important thing in her life” and avoid the “weariness” of seeing her mother in a judgment.
“I have to choose my battles and the most important one for me now is to do everything so that my children live a full life and focus on what is really important: watching them grow and spending time with them.”
However, this is not the end of the Colombian’s confrontations with the Spanish justice system, as she has a second case open in the courts of Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona) following another complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office, which accuses her of defrauding more than six million in personal income tax and the 2018 wealth tax, using a corporate network based in tax havens.