Shakira has accused the Spanish Treasury of “publicly burning her at the stake” like a witch during the Inquisition in her fiercest attack since her tax fraud case.
The Colombian singer confessed to six tax fraud charges last November before a Barcelona court in exchange for a three-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 6.4 million pounds (7.3 million euros) on the first day of her scheduled trial.
She had claimed she was being “persecuted” before reaching a plea deal and accused the Spanish justice system of a “smear campaign” after admitting wrongdoing.
Overnight, the artist, who left Barcelona to start a new life in Miami with her two children after ending her decade-long relationship with former footballer Gerard Piqué, published a strongly worded letter in respected Spanish newspaper El Mundo accusing the Spanish tax agency of a sexist campaign of intimidation that ended with her being paraded around like a “hunting trophy”.
The singer also said: ‘It may seem incomprehensible, but for me the Spanish decade was a lost decade economically, and not because I worked little as everyone knows.
Shakira has accused the Spanish tax authorities of “publicly burning her at the stake” after she confessed to tax fraud and paid a £6.4m fine
Shakira and Piqué were together for 11 years and had two children: Milan, 11, and Sasha, nine, before their ugly split in 2022.
Shakira said she was speaking out again for the sake of her children and was furious: “Things are not solved by burning a public figure at the stake every year.”
‘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 are made up of what I earned before arriving in Spain and what I earned after leaving. Everything I earned in those years went to the Spanish State.’
Repeating an earlier claim that he had admitted wrongdoing rather than go to court with his accusers to “protect his children”, he added: “Rather than trying to punish those who do not comply, the Spanish tax agency wants to display hunting trophies to rebuild questionable credibility.
“And how do you achieve that? By frightening people, threatening them with prison sentences, compromising the peace of our children and pressuring us to give in.
‘They wanted the public to believe that I did not pay my taxes, when the truth is that I paid much more than I should have.’
Spanish prosecutors had announced before Shakira entered court in a striking pink suit to plead guilty and formalize her plea deal that they were seeking a prison sentence of eight years and two months and a fine of nearly 21 million pounds (23.7 million euros) if judges found her guilty of six counts of tax fraud she was accused of having committed in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
The prosecution focused on refuting Shakira’s claim that she resided in the Bahamas between early 2012 and late 2014 and should not have been considered a Spanish resident for tax purposes despite having started dating her ex Gerard Piqué in 2010.
Many of the 117 witnesses due to testify would have been asked about their knowledge of his life in Barcelona during the crucial three years before he registered as a full-time tax resident in Spain in 2015.
Among them were the Colombian artist’s Argentine ex-boyfriend, Antonio de la Rúa, her driver, hotel and restaurant workers and a beauty salon employee, as well as Zumba teachers who, according to prosecutors, came to the Catalan capital specifically to teach Shakira classes.
Prosecutors laid out the basis of their case against Shakira in a 15-page indictment filed with an investigating magistrate.
In her emotional letter, Shakira insisted that Spanish tax authorities were guilty of sexism and claimed they manipulated her desire to make her relationship with Piqué work.
Piqué was rumoured to have been unfaithful with the singer, who appears in a photo at the Met Gala.
In the written document, they accuse the artist, whose real name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, of living in Spain “regularly” during the fiscal years 2012 to 2014, first in Piqué’s bachelor pad in Barcelona and then in a mansion she bought with her ex-partner in Esplugues de Llobregat, near the Catalan capital, through an investment firm.
They said her absences from Spain for work and other reasons were “sporadic,” except for a 61-day period she spent in the United States in 2012, when she was a coach on the American version of the singing competition “The Voice.”
Shakira insisted in her emotional letter that Spanish tax authorities were guilty of sexism and claimed they manipulated her desire to make her relationship with Piqué work, saying: “If the singer had been an American man, had fallen in love with a Spanish woman and had visited her regularly, I find it hard to believe that the Tax Agency would have considered that he had any intention of reaching an agreement.”
He added: ‘A person who spends his time touring around the world cannot intend to reside tax-wise in a place just because the person he is currently in a relationship with lives there.
‘It would be the same as thinking that a tourist who spends his holidays in Ibiza has to become a tax resident just because he has had a local romance.’
Shakira said she was speaking out again for the sake of her children and was furious: “Things are not solved by burning a public figure at the stake every year as if it were an Inquisition trial to recover lost prestige.
‘I want to leave my children the legacy of a woman who explained her reasons calmly and at the right 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 to move on with my life. Not out of cowardice or guilt.”
Shakira and Piqué were together for 11 years and had two children: Milan, 11, and Sasha, nine, before their ugly split in 2022.
It was rumoured that the former footballer had been unfaithful to the singer with his now girlfriend Clara Chia, 26.
The pop star was spotted last month having dinner with a mystery man in her new hometown of Miami.
In June, when asked about her love life by Rolling Stone magazine, she told the outlet: “I’m not thinking about that. What room do I have for a man right now?”
‘What can I say, I like men. That’s the problem. I shouldn’t like them after everything that’s happened to me, but imagine how much I like men for me to still like them.’
