Shakira: these are the problems that the singer has with the feared treasury of Spain

These are not easy times for Shakira. To his separation from the soccer player Gerard Piqué and the delicate state of his father’s health, this week the accusation of the Prosecutor’s Office for tax fraud in Spain was added.

(You might be interested in: Shakira in trouble: The Spanish Prosecutor’s Office asks for jail and a millionaire fine for her)

After long conversations and explanations, he will finally sit on the bench of the accused. The Prosecutor’s Office formalized a letter in hers against her on Friday, in which she asks for eight years and two months in prison for her, as well as the payment of a fine of 23.7 million euros.

(You might be interested in: Shakira will go to trial for tax fraud in Spain after rejecting an agreement)

The accusation came after the singer rejected on Wednesday the agreement offered by the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office to avoid trial for tax fraud of 14.5 million euros.

If found guilty, Shakira could go to prison.

In any case, the possibility that they reach an agreement persists until the very moment of the trial. But either way, she would have to sit on the sidelines, if only to sign off on the pact.

These types of agreements are common when there is a known character involved, as they tend to avoid media exposure of a trial. According to sources close to her, she does not intend to avoid it.

In this case, a long parade of people is expected, since it is about tracing the drawing of their days in Barcelona.

The Prosecutor’s Office requests that 37 witnesses be questioned, in addition to Shakira; some of them, electronically.

He is accused of six crimes against the Public Treasury, for not paying personal income tax and wealth tax between 2012 and 2014, with the aggravating circumstance that it is a very high amount and that he allegedly used companies in tax havens.

At the same time, it has the extenuating circumstance that it has already paid 17.2 million euros.

Within the next few weeks the court of Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona) that
handles the case will dictate the order to open the oral trial.

Shakira issued a statement denouncing an “outrage of her rights” when she did not accept the terms offered.

Ensure in it that “Never had there been a persecution with such a lack of reasonableness and so fierce on the part of the treasury.” He considers himself innocent, trusts in justice and assures that he does not have any pending debt.

On the other hand, he points out that he “faithfully followed the recommendations of the best specialists and expert advisers.”

The key

The key to the matter is to decide if during that time he was a resident in Spain; that is, if she spent at least 183 days in the country (half plus one per year).

She maintains that her residence was then in the Bahamas and that she only went to the Iberian Peninsula from time to time.

Ensures that an attempt has been made to prove “Your stay for certain days, but not even close to what the law requires to be considered a resident.”

The defense denounces that “an indeterminate legal concept has been abused, such as sporadic absences, on the basis of a technically debatable question of who does not even earn in Spain since their benefits come from abroad where they work and exercise their profession”.

And he offers more details: he says that it is about the money earned on international tours and on The Voice, when he was not a tax resident in Spain.

He denounces that they have “used improper means to pressure, as they do daily and unfairly with thousands of taxpayers for profit.”

Behind the tracks

The Tax Agency —equivalent to the Dian in Colombia— has a team of nearly two thousand inspectors dedicated to following the trail of possible evaders.

One of them, named Susana, reconstructed Shakira’s steps during the years in question to determine where she was each day.

He put together the whole puzzle of his life and studied his accounts.

She knows who her hairdresser was (and that he didn’t charge her), what her advisors bought with her card, which doctors treated her at the Tekton clinic, where she gave birth to her children.

He found out that I was taking French and Zumba classes (with a teacher named Betsie), that she went to a beauty center in the upper part of Barcelona and that she had rented the house to a swimmer.

She learned details of her concerts, her recordings in the study of the group Estopa and the publications of her fan clubs that located her at least sixty times in Spain in 2011.

According to the inspector, Shakira did not visit the Bahamas during the period in question and does not unite her with the islands “no professional, family, personal or social ties.”

Shakira, who assures that she has lived in Spain since the end of 2014, when she already had her eldest son and was expecting her second, provided a permanent residence permit granted in 2007 in Bahamas.

For inspector Susana, it is not enough, since she defends that the only thing needed to obtain such a document is to buy a house and assures that she was simply looking for a “tax purpose”.

In addition, he scrutinized his close circle: parents, siblings, assistants, staff of the Pies Descalzos Foundation, stylists and trusted people in Colombia.

She knows who visited her in Barcelona and assures that if she really lived in the Bahamas, the logical thing is that she would have met them on the islands.

He is one of the people who knows the most about Shakira in the world.

pique to pique

Shakira’s closeness to Spain goes through her relationship with the Catalan Gerard Piqué, whom she met in 2010, when he recorded the Waka-waka, the song of the World Cup in South Africa.

The footballer has also had problems with the Treasury, which fined him 2.1 million euros for using a company to supposedly pay less taxes. After a long litigation, the Supreme Court agreed with the player and annulled the penalty.

Shakira has, in any case, the support of her fans, as she recently verified when Piqué was booed in the games that Barça has played in the United States, while cries of support for the singer have been heard.

The harshness of the Tax Agency

The Spanish fiscal regime is severe against tax evaders. There are large fines, interest charges and prison sentences of several years.

Since 2015, the Tax Agency has published the list of taxpayers who owe more than one million euros. Names have been seen such as former vice president Rodrigo Rato, banker Mario Conde, former Real Madrid president Lorenzo Sanz, former motorcycling champion Alfonso Sito.

Soccer players deserve a separate chapter, as they are permanent targets of research. Some of them have been Radamel Falcao, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dani Alves, Xabi Alonso and Neymar. Also tennis players like Arantxa Sánchez Vicario and Rafael Nadal.

In the world of entertainment and culture, the cases of the singer and television presenter Bertín Osborne, the singers Miguel Bosé and Ana Torroja (Mecano), the actors Imanol Arias and Ana Duato (Tell me how it happened), the actresses Loles León (one of the “Almodovar girls”), Paz Vega and Belén Rueda (The Sea Inside), among many others.

Others who have been subjected to scrutiny and criticism are youtubers, such as Rubius, who have changed their tax residence to Andorra.

Not even Juan Carlos I has been saved from the investigations. The troubles in which he has been involved in recent years are well known: due to suspicions of tax fraud, he went ahead to regularize his situation with the Treasury. And, although he was accused of several crimes, he was saved by the immunity that protects him as king.

A few days ago the Tax Agency published the results of the control related to the fiscal year of 2021, in which it announces that it took 69 taxpayers with high net worth who pretended not to live in Spain but in thirty different countries to evade taxes. This has allowed him to raise 24.5 million euros so far.

The importance of taxes in Spain lies in the fact that they represent more than 20 per cent of the total income of the State in the case of individuals and a little more than 7 per cent in that of companies.

If he succeeds in the lawsuit against Shakira, the collection will increase considerably.

But there is a long way to go to know. The singer is convinced of her innocence and it is foreseeable that she displays a good inventory of arguments to prove it.

JUANITA SAMPER OSPINA
Correspondent of THE TIME
MADRID

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