Shakira declared this Thursday, as being investigated, in the second criminal case opened against her for alleged tax fraud, as judicial sources have confirmed to EL PAÍS. In a statement via videoconference from Miami that lasted barely half an hour, the Colombian singer defended her innocence and denied the Prosecutor's thesis that she defrauded six million euros in 2018 through a corporate structure. The artist, who last November accepted a three-year prison sentence for a fraud of 14.5 million, considers that this second case was “one more step in the pressure” of the Tax Agency to accept its responsibility in the first process. After the statement, her defense, carried out by criminal lawyer Pau Molins, has requested that the proceedings be archived.
In the summer of 2023, Shakira, the Prosecutor's Office and the Tax Agency had resumed negotiations to close an agreement for the 14.5 million fraud committed between 2012 and 2014. At that time, according to the prosecution's thesis, the singer resided in Spain and had to pay their taxes here. The agreement was not sealed then, but at the last minute, a few hours before the singer from Barranquilla sat in the dock. In the end, to avoid media exposure of a trial that was going to expose three years of her life in Barcelona, the accused accepted a reduction in the sentence (one year in prison for one of the three tax crimes) and the payment of a fine. of 7.3 million which is added to the defrauded fee.
Around the same dates that these negotiations were taking place, the Prosecutor's Office opened a second criminal front against Shakira following another Treasury inspection and filed a complaint for the alleged fraud of six million euros in 2018. Through a “ network of companies”, according to the complaint, the singer was able to “simulate” the transfer of her rights to instrumental companies. “Moved by the desire to pay taxes as little as possible,” Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll deducted expenses “that were not appropriate,” the text adds. The singer, always according to the complaint, stopped paying 5.3 million in personal income tax and another 700,000 euros in tax on her assets.
In July 2023, a court in Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona) opened investigation proceedings and summoned Shakira to testify as under investigation, a procedure that was carried out this Thursday by videoconference to avoid her displacement from Miami (where she resides with her children). to Spain. The statement has been video recorded and also transcribed by court order.
In her statement, Shakira explained that this second case was one more step in the “pressure” strategy to which the Tax Agency has subjected her and recalled that, before she was notified of the complaint, she deposited the six million that are claimed. The artist has defended the legality of the corporate structure (created in 2008), has denied any desire to defraud the treasury and has limited the issue to a mere “technical discrepancy.” The person under investigation has added that that year, when she was already residing in Spain with her ex-partner Gerard Piqué, she was taxed by personal income tax and not by companies, despite the fact that her income was conveyed through companies. And she added that she always did it following the advice of her advisors.
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