A procedure against Shakira for tax fraud closed by the Spanish courts

A Spanish court announced on Thursday, May 9, that it had closed the tax evasion proceedings launched against the global star Shakira, thus following the request of the prosecution. With this classification, the Colombian artist – who at the end of last year managed to avoid a trial in a separate procedure in exchange for a heavy fine – has put an end to legal hassles in Spain, a country where she resided for a long time when she was in a relationship with ex-FC Barcelona footballer Gerard Piqué.

Following the request of the prosecution, announced on Wednesday, this court on the outskirts of Barcelona recognized that the Colombian artist had committed “irregularities” in its 2018 tax return, with a shortfall of around 6 million euros for the Spanish tax authorities. But “irregularities are not enough for a (criminal) offense against the tax administration to be characterized”estimated the magistrate in charge of the case, according to which the interpreter of Hips Don’t Lie did not have “the desire to evade taxes”.

The prosecution, for its part, ruled that there was no “no sufficient clues” to criminally prosecute Shakira in this case. This court announced in July that it had opened this procedure against the singer, suspected then of having used companies domiciled in tax havens to avoid paying all of her income and wealth tax in 2018.

In order to show her desire to regularize her situation with regard to the tax authorities, Shakira paid, in August 2023, 6.6 million euros to the courts, a sum corresponding to the 6 million owed to the tax authorities, increased by interest late payment and regularization fees. Shakira still remains in the sights of the Spanish tax authorities for the year 2011, but this procedure is only administrative and not judicial.

The singer had already avoided an embarrassing trial at the end of 2023 before the Barcelona court as part of the first prosecutions for tax fraud. The prosecution accused her in this separate case of not having paid her taxes in Spain in 2012, 2013 and 2014, even though during this period she had lived more than one hundred and eighty-three days per year in the country, the threshold beyond which a person is considered a tax resident. He had requested a sentence of eight years and two months in prison and a fine of 23.8 million euros against him.

The singer for her part categorically denied these accusations, ensuring that, even if she had started a relationship with Gerard Piqué in 2011, she had continued to move around the world in those years, because of her career. She claimed 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, just before the birth of her second child.

Summoned to court in November to stand trial, she sealed a last-minute agreement with the prosecution, and thus avoided a trial promising an unpacking of her private life.

The singer of Waka Waka was ordered, as part of this agreement, to pay a fine of more than 7.3 million euros, corresponding to “50%” of the amount of the fraud. She had already paid 17.45 million euros to the tax authorities to regularize her situation in this matter.