Alex Trelinski
POP STAR Shakira has cut a deal with prosecutors at the start of day one of her tax fraud trial in Barcelona on Monday.
The singer, 46, told the presiding judge that she accepted the agreement reached between her lawyers and state prosecutors.
She faced six counts of failing to pay the Spanish government €14.5 million in taxes between 2012 and 2014 when she said she lived mainly abroad.
The deal involves her paying a €7 million fine and a three-year-prison term.
The Columbian star however will not go to jail as she will pay an extra fine of €432,000.
The sentence handed down was ‘final’ and it means that the trial on tax fraud charges will not go ahead.
Shakira entered the Barcelona courthouse at 10.00am and the session lasted barely two minutes as a judge reported that a letter of agreement had been reached.
The singer, who won Latin Grammy awards in Sevilla last Thursday, stepped in front of the microphone to purely speak- saying was aware of the agreement, that she agreed to it, and thanked the court.
The deal means that Shakira was a tax resident between 2012 and 2014, and therefore had to pay her taxes to Spain’s Tax Agency.
Shakira’s long-standing argument was that during that period she was a nomad who travelled all over the world giving concerts and that her only visits to Barcelona, of a sporadic nature, were to visit her boyfriend at the time, Gerard Pique.
The Tax Agency carried out an intense investigation by contacting service providers and professionals who assisted Shakira at that stage, and concluded that she spent more than half of the year in Spain, a necessary condition for a citizen to be considered a tax resident.
The trial was going to feature a parade of witnesses who were going to give an account of the singer’s life at that time, but those details will now be spared any public exposure.
Sources close to Shakira suggested that after resisting previous deal offers, she now wanted to put behind her time in Barcelona, which she earlier this year to move to Miami with her two children.
A plea bargain deal had been resisted by her on two previous occasions.
Her tax problems with Spanish authorities are however not consigned to history.
Prosecutors charged Shakira in September for her alleged evasion of €6.7 million in tax on her 2018 income.
They’ve accused her of using an offshore company based in a tax haven as an avoidance measure.
READ MORE:
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