The Colombian singer can face a high prison sentence under the accusation of not paying 14.5 million to the Tax Agency.
The artist has already paid the Tax Agency 17.2 million euros and denounces that the public ministry has resorted to “improper means” to pressure.
Shakira has rejected the proposal of the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office to avoid going to trial under the accusation of allegedly having defrauded the Treasury of 14.5 million euros between 2012 and 2014, according to the artist and her legal team in a statement. Therefore, the Colombian singer, who reiterates her innocence, will go to trial. During the last weeks, the artist’s lawyers have held talks with the public ministry, although, finally, an agreement has not been reached. The prosecution is finalizing the indictment. In the complaint filed by the prosecutor Carmen Martín Aragón, he was charged with six crimes for not paying taxes, which can lead to a hefty prison sentence.
Shakira and her team consider that this case constitutes “a total violation of her rights”, since she has always shown impeccable conduct, as a person and taxpayer and “a full willingness to resolve” any difference from the outset, even before the process penal. Still disagreeing with her legal team about the consistency of the alleged debt, the artist has already paid 17.2 million that, according to the Spanish Tax Agency, she should pay and, therefore, “for many years there has been no outstanding debt with the Treasury,” according to the representatives of the singer from Barranquilla.
The artist maintains that “always faithfully the recommendations of the best specialists and expert advisers of PricewaterhouseCoopers” and that she has complied “impeccable” in the more than 20 jurisdictions in which she has paid taxes and that “has never been a persecution with such lack of reasonableness and so fierce on the part of the treasury, nor such an evident use of media and reputational pressure as a collection mechanism”.
“Uncompromising attitude”
In the understanding of the legal team, the prosecution “still does not show” direct evidence or reasonable criteria “to support its accusation and” has maintained a completely intransigent attitude throughout the entire investigation “of the judicial process. Shakira, it affects, never remained the required time according to the norm given its international commitments. The lawyers consider that the public prosecution has abused “an indeterminate legal concept, such as that of sporadic absences, on the basis of a technically debatable issue” “The prosecution has endeavored in collecting the money earned on my international tours and on “The Voice” when I was not yet a resident in Spain, and they have resorted to improper means to pressure, as they do daily and unfairly with thousands of taxpayers for profit”, says the artist.
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The legal debate of this process is whether Shakira was a habitual resident in Spain since 2012 and remained in the country the minimum of 183 days a year that requires paying taxes to the Spanish Treasury, apart from occasional, punctual or sporadic departures. to do for his performances. This is what the prosecution maintains, while the defense has so far argued the opposite: what was sporadic were her stays in Spain.
The prosecution maintains that Shakira lived “regularly” between 2012 and 2014 in Spain, first in a house in Barcelona and then in a house in Esplugues de Llobregat, which was acquired together with her partner, Gerard Piqué, through of a society. Her stays outside of Spain, according to her accusation, during 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’. The accusation maintains that in order not to pay taxes in Spain, she made use of a “corporate network” abroad and, above all, in tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Panama.