2023-11-20 07:06:12
Shakira is back in the spotlight this Monday, but this time it’s not for her artistic talents. The trial of the global star, for tax fraud of nearly 14.5 million euros, will open in Barcelona where the prosecution is demanding a sentence of more than eight years in prison against him.
The 46-year-old Colombian artist was summoned at 10 a.m. by a court in the Catalan metropolis, where she resided for years with ex-footballer Gerard Pique before their highly publicized separation last year.
A possible agreement “until the last minute”
A last-minute deal with prosecutors – in which Shakira could admit guilt and pay a hefty fine in exchange for a stay of the trial – remains possible, however. The singer’s defense, who said last year that a trial was a “question of principle” to defend her innocence, indicated that no agreement had been sealed so far but that it remained theoretically possible ” until the last minute.
The prosecution accuses Shakira of not having paid her taxes in Spain in 2012, 2013 and 2014 when, according to him, she had lived in those years more than 183 days a year in the country, the threshold beyond which a person must be considered as a tax resident there. He requested a prison sentence of eight years and two months and a fine of 23.8 million euros against him.
The singer categorically denies these accusations and her lawyers assure that, even if she began a relationship with Piqué in 2011, she continued to move around the world because of her career. Shakira claims 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.
The name of the star in the “Pandora Papers”
This summer, the prosecution began another procedure against the singer, who moved to Miami with her children after her separation, for another tax fraud in 2018, estimated at six million euros.
The trial which is opening should normally last until mid-December with nearly 120 witnesses. In order to support the accusation, tax investigators dissected the private life of the star, questioning her neighbors, checking her accounts on social networks, controlling her expenses in hair salons in Barcelona or in the clinic where she was followed in the city for her pregnancy in 2012-2013.
“Unacceptable methods”, for the lawyers of Shakira, who saw her name appear in the “Pandora Papers”, a vast journalistic investigation published at the end of 2021 and accusing several hundred personalities of having concealed assets in offshore companies.
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