Shakira can’t take a step Spain without the press recording it. He has the eyes of the media, his followers, the public and even the Tax authorities over.
(Also read: Shakira: this is Gorka Ezkurdia, the surfer with whom they saw the singer)
During the last week alone, the singer from Barranquilla has been in the news for the defense brief that she presented to the Spanish tax authorities, for the photos that she was taken in Cantabria with a young man (apparently, her surf coach) and for the meeting with her ex-husband, Gerard Piqué, in a Barcelona court to ratify the separation and custody of their two sons with whom they will settle in another country.
(See here: Piqué and the memory of an old love that was broken by Shakira)
On Thursday the press was expectant at the doors of the court of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, in Barcelona, where the couple had to go. Shakira He entered through the back door and Pique He did it from the front. Each was accompanied by a security team and advisers (although hers was much larger).
Although the process did not take long, it gave rise to speculation about the status of their relationship. Especially since it is now known that Shakira will go to live in Miami with her children at any timeaway from the Spanish eyes that scrutinize her, especially those of the prosecutor, whom she accuses of “violating” her right to privacy while investigating her for alleged tax fraud.
The tax mess
In July, the Prosecutor’s Office requested a prison sentence of eight years and two months for the singer for six crimes of tax fraud, plus the additional payment of a fine of 23.7 million euros.
However, Shakira rejected an agreement to avoid being tried, arguing that she trusts her innocence after having paid some €14.5 million required by the Tax Agency and three other interests.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the artist lived in Spain regularly between 2012 and 2014, first in Barcelona and then in Esplugues de Llobregat, with Pique. For this reason, it maintains that it had the obligation to pay taxes in Spain for all of its income regardless of whether it had been obtained in part in other countries and accuses it of using a network of companies based in a tax haven and in nations such as Malta. or Panama to hide your income.
Shakira met Piqué and began to visit Spain sporadically to meet the athlete on the few days off
In the brief filed late last week, Shakira insists that during the period in question she did not live permanently in Spain. His defense alleges, among other things, that the accusation “is based on the erroneous assumption” that until 2015 his presence in Spain did not exceed the term that obliges him to pay taxes and that his income was managed through a company Maltese that meets all legal requirements.
For the third time, Shakira changed her legal team. Now, represented by the Molins Criminal Defense office, they insist that the singer was “forced” to travel the world for her professional activity.
The key years
In the world cup in south africain 2010, Shakira met Pique and he began to visit Spain sporadically to “meet the athlete on the few days off that his intense professional schedule allowed him.” The personal situations of each meant that they only saw each other on vacation or on “fleeting trips” in Barcelona and other parts of the world.
In 2011, the defense alleges, he spent no more than 60 days in Spain. Her world tour took her to other places, such as Abu Dhabi, Bologna, Budapest, Croatia, Munich, Beirut, Moscow, Tijuana, Genoa and Puerto Rico. She later participated in the program The Voice of the United States, for which she was there for long periods in the company of her first son, Milan.
“It is, in all cases, notorious, public and registered facts with numerous photographic and audiovisual material that support them,” the letter states.
In all cases, these are notorious, public and registered facts with numerous photographic and audiovisual material that support them.
The singer changed her way of life at the end of 2014, when she decided to settle with Piqué in Barcelona. They sent the eldest son to school and the second, Sasha, was born (January 2015). It was then that “the controversial renewal of the contract” also took place, in the words of the defense, for five years of the footballer with Barcelona FC. She herself, “with transparency and good faith”, declared herself a tax resident in Spain.
But until then his residence was in The Bahamas, as he wanted to demonstrate with a certificate, which did not seem conclusive to the Treasury. “Countries with low taxation have the characteristic that they grant residence very easily and never make them pay for world heritage,” explains Javier Hurtado, director of Inspection of the Tax Agency (the Spanish Dian). “Therefore, it is very common for false residents to choose these low-tax territories as places to establish their false residence,” he adds.
on his tracks
The Treasury inspectors have redone the steps of Shakira in Spain. The paparazzi, the tabloids, his presentations and the interviews he gave have been his allies without knowing it. They have even scrutinized his private life. Few cases have developed more publicly.
In fact, the same defense brief criticizes that “the legal certainty that must be guaranteed to any taxpayer” and their “fundamental rights” are not respected. He assures that they requested medical information and carried out other investigations that “violate the right to privacy” of the singer. And they reproach him for using as an argument the use of credit cards in her name in different places. “Unless she possesses the gift of ubiquity, her card spending does not at all serve to prove the artist’s physical presence,” she says.
Inspectors have recreated Shakira’s routines in Spain on calendars. They know her hairdressers, the gyms, the recording studios, the language and Zumba teachers and the other places she went to.
sources and payments
Another defense argument Shakira It focuses on the source of your income. ensures that Spain represents only 2 percent, while the majority comes from the USA.
“He has already paid more than 90 million euros for worldwide income that has not been generated in Spain and for his international assets, without having his business center in this country where he never obtained significant benefits,” he points out.
And he highlights that since 2011 he has paid 104 million euros in taxes in the world; of them, 90 million have been in Spain. In addition, she remembers that before the legal mess began, she gave the Tax Agency the money she requested.
Shakira, who says she has no “need” to “create complications with the tax authorities”, emphasizes that she has always instructed her advisers to “pay all taxes wherever they are due.”
In addition, his defense brings up the letter of his “extensive philanthropic work”, through the Pies Descalzos and Latin America Foundation in Solidarity Action (Alas). She also affirms that in 2003 Unicef appointed her a goodwill ambassador and that in 2011 Barak Obama, then president of the United States, appointed her as her adviser.
In this way, she intends to demonstrate that her philanthropic role, added to her work commitments, have taken her to many parts of the world. And she accuses the Tax agency of not taking into account “at all” what is the modus vivendi of an international artist.
A whole circus
Any Shakira action grows with the media magnifying glass. During the past weekend she made sure that she had traveled with her children to Miami, when she was actually in Cantabria, not far from Barcelona. The photos that a paparazi took of her with what appears to be her surf coach gave rise to speculation about a relationship with him that goes beyond just friendship. That is why it is easy to foresee that the trial will not go unnoticed in the eyes of the Spanish citizenry.
“Especially unfortunate is the circumstance that the Treasury intends to turn the act of the oral trial into a kind of media circus to damage the prestige of the artist,” says her defense in this regard. “Only in this way can it be interpreted that hundreds of people have been summoned to testify as witnesses who can contribute little or nothing about the place of residence of Shakiralike all the neighbors on the stairs where her partner lived or people who met her on a few occasions or interviewed her only once”, she adds.
In any case, the singer points out that she trusts the independence of the Spanish Justice and that in the trial she will prove her “full innocence”.
Shakira is not the only public figure who has had problems with the Treasury. Without going very far, Piqué himself was fined more than two million euros, which he ended up annulling after a long dispute.
Perhaps one of the best-known cases was that of the singer Lola Flores, who in the late 1980s had to pay 28 million pesetas (about 200,000 euros). She then uttered one of her most emblematic phrases: “If each Spaniard gave a peseta, perhaps he would get out of debt.” Surely, Shakira will not go so far, but without a doubt the trial will give a lot to talk about in the coming months.
JUANITA SAMPER OSPINA
TIME CORRESPONDENT
MADRID
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