Shakira agrees to a minimum sentence with the prosecution for tax fraud

Barcelona

11/20/2023 at 10:21

CET


The Colombian artist had already deposited the amount of the debt with the treasury and has regularized its situation before the Tax Agency

In the end, I agree. Shakira (Isabel Mebarak Ripoll) has reached a pact with the prosecutor’s office, the State Attorney’s Office and the Generalitatwho also carries out the accusation, by which the request of 8 years and one month in prison and fines of 23.8 million euros is reduced to a minimum sentence for alleged fraud against the Treasury of 14.5 million euros between the years 2012 and 2014. The Colombian artist had already deposited the amount of the debt with the treasury and has regularized its situation before the Tax Agency, paying thousands of euros more to pay the corresponding taxes. According to the artist, she has paid 90 million euros.

The prosecution argues that the artist used a corporate network to defraud, with ramifications in tax havens, and that she pretended that she lived abroad when in reality she did so in Barcelona with the former soccer player Gerard Piqué, from whom she has separated. According to prosecutor Carmen Martín Aragín, the Colombian singer lived regularly between 2012 and 2014, first in a home in Barcelona and then in a house in Esplugues de Llobregat, which was acquired together with Piqué through a company. . The singer’s stays outside Spain at that time were “for professional reasons”, with a very short duration, with the exception of the United States, where she participated in the program ‘La Voz’, she argues,

The accusation considers that the singer was in our country most of the time. and exceeded the 183 days established by law to consider that a person is habitually resident in Spain and, therefore, must pay their taxes in Spain. Specifically, the accused effectively remained in our country: 242 days in 2012, 212 days in 2013 and 243 days in 2014. The absence qualifies them as “sporadic”, based on tax regulations.

Networked in tax havens

In its provisional brief, the prosecution detailed that the singer, “knowing that she lived regularly in Spain and that she remained in this country for most of the year”, with the exception of outings to fulfill her professional commitments and her leisure activities. , used a corporate framework that, although it had been created years ago, did not modify its essential lines and used it to between 2012 and 2014 “hide” the Treasury and the Tax agency of Catalonia’s income and assets.

The “plan” to avoid paying taxes, according to the indictment, “basically” consisted of companies that formally appeared as holders of income and assets, instead of the artist. This way, most of the funds traveled to tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Panama and Luxembourg, as well as other countries, such as the United States and the Netherlands. In Spain it has two companies, one in Madrid and the other in Barcelona. In some cases the provision of services was simulated.

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