Shakira has accused the Spanish Treasury of ‘publicly burning her at the stake’ like a witch during the Inquisition in her fiercest attack yet since her tax fraud case.
The Colombian singer confessed to six tax fraud crimes last November at a court in Barcelona in exchange for a suspended three-year prison sentence and a £6.4 million (€7.3 million) fine on the first day of her scheduled trial.
She had claimed she was being ‘persecuted’ before striking her plea bargain deal and accused the Spanish judiciary system of a ‘smear campaign’ after admitting wrongdoing.
Overnight the artist, who quit Barcelona for a new life in Miami with her two children after her decade-long relationship with former footballer Gerard Pique ended, published a hard-hitting letter in respected Spanish daily El Mundo accusing the Spanish Tax Agency of a sexist campaign of intimidation which ended with her being displayed as a ‘hunting trophy.’
The singer, also claimed: ‘It may seem incomprehensible, but for me the Spanish decade was a financially lost decade, and not because I worked little as everyone knows.
Shakira has accused the Spanish Treasury of ‘publicly burning her at the stake’ after she confessed to tax fraud and paid a £6.4million fine
Shakira and Pique were together for 11 years and had two children – sons Milan, 11, and Sasha, nine, before their ugly 2022 split
Claiming she was speaking out again now for the sake of her children, Shakira raged: ‘Things are not solved by burning a public figure every year at the stake’
‘I gave 120 concerts in 90 different cities. How can a person who gives 120 concerts lose money? It sounds strange, I know, but today my assets consist of what I earned before arriving in Spain and what I earned after leaving it. Everything I earned in those years went to the Spanish State.’
Repeating a previous claim that she had admitted wrongdoing instead of going to trial with her accusers to ‘protect her children’, she added: ‘More than trying to punish those who do not comply, the Spanish Tax Agency wants to show off hunting trophies to rebuild a credibility in question.
‘And how is that achieved? By frightening people, threatening them with jail time, compromising the peace of mind of our children and putting us under pressure to break us.
‘They wanted to make the public believe that I did not pay my taxes, when the truth is that I paid much more than I should have.’
Spanish state prosecutors had announced before Shakira walked into court in an eye-catching pink suit to plead guilty and formalise her plea bargain deal that they were seeking an eight year, two month jail term and a fine of nearly £21 million (€23.7 million) if judges found her guilty of six counts of tax fraud they accused her of committing in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
The prosecution case centred on a rebuttal of Shakira’s assertion she was resident in the Bahamas between the start of 2012 and the end of 2014 and shouldn’t have been considered a Spanish resident for tax purposes despite starting to date her ex Gerard Pique in 2010.
Many of the 117 witnesses due to testify would have been asked about their knowledge of her life in Barcelona during the three key years before she registered as a full-time tax resident in Spain in 2015.
They included the Colombian artist’s ex-Argentinian boyfriend Antonio de la Rua, her chauffeur, hotel and restaurant workers and an employee at a beauty salon, as well as Zumba teachers prosecutors will allege came to the Catalan capital specifically to give Shakira classes.
Prosecutors laid out the basis of their case against Shakira in a 15-page indictment submitted to an investigating magistrate.
Shakira insisted in her emotional letter Spanish tax authorities were guilty of sexism and claimed they manipulated her desire to make her relationship with Pique work
Pique was rumoured to have been unfaithful with the singer, who is pictured at the Met Gala
In the written document they accused the artist, real name Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, of living in Spain ‘on a regular basis’ during the tax years 2012 to 2014, first at Pique’s Barcelona bachelor flat and then at a mansion she bought with her former partner in Esplugues de Llobregat near the Catalan capital through an investment firm.
They claimed her absences from Spain for work and other reasons were ‘sporadic’ apart from a period of 61 days she spent in the States in 2012 when she was a coach on the US version of singing competition ‘The Voice.’
Shakira insisted in her emotional letter Spanish tax authorities were guilty of sexism and claimed they manipulated her desire to make her relationship with Pique work, saying: ‘If the singer had been an American man, had fallen in love with a Spanish woman and visited her regularly, I find it difficult to believe that the Tax Agency would have considered that he had an intention to settle.’
She added: ‘A person who spends his time on tour around the world cannot have the intention of fiscally residing in a place just because the person with whom he is currently in a relationship lives there.
‘It would be the same as thinking that a tourist who holidays in Ibiza has to become a tax resident just because she has had a local romance.’
Claiming she was speaking out again now for the sake of her children, Shakira raged: ‘Things are not solved by burning a public figure every year at the stake as if it were a process of the Inquisition in order to recover lost prestige.
‘I want to leave my children the legacy of a woman who explained her reasons calmly and in her own time, when she considered it necessary, not when she was forced to do so.
‘I need them to know that I made the decisions I made to protect them, to be by their side and move on with my life. Not out of cowardice or guilt.’
Shakira and Pique were together for 11 years and had two children – sons Milan, 11, and Sasha, nine, before their ugly 2022 split.
The former footballer was rumoured to have been unfaithful with the singer with his now girlfriend Clara Chia, 26.
The pop star was spotted last month dining with a mystery man in her new home city of Miami.
She told Rolling Stone when asked about her love life in June: ‘I’m not thinking about that. What space do I have for a man right now?’
‘What can I tell you, I like men. That’s the problem. I shouldn’t like them with everything that’s happened to me, but imagine how much I like men that I still like them.’
