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Shakira decided to settle her $15 million tax fraud case for her two sons’ sake.
“I did it to protect my children and to get on with my life, not out of cowardice or guilt,” Shakira, 47, wrote in an essay published in Spanish newspaper El Mundo on Thursday, September 5.
The Colombian singer was accused of defrauding the Spanish government of more than $15 million in taxes from 2012 to 2014. The prosecutors alleged that Shakira claimed to live in the Bahamas while actually residing in Catalonia, Spain. (At this time, Shakira’s then-partner, Gerard Piqué, played pro soccer in the European country.)
Shakira — who shares sons Milan, 11, and Sasha, 9, with Piqué, 37 — fervently and continually denied the allegations. (News broke in July 2023 that prosecutors were pursuing a trial against Shakira, but she settled the case before going to court.)
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In her Thursday essay, Shakira explained her living arrangements.
“In 2011, I wanted my relationship with Gerard Piqué to prosper, who at that time was tied to Spain for work reasons,” she wrote. “Traveling to Spain created many complications for me because it forced me to be away from my work centers. Whenever I returned, I did so to make the relationship prosper, not because of a ‘vocation to stay.’”
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According to Shakira, the Spanish Tax Agency’s claims were “childish” to assume that she was intentionally avoiding tax obligations.
“The reality was very different: I always fulfilled my obligations. My finances were investigated by institutions as little suspicious as the White House or the IRS and approved by other countries of the European Union,” Shakira wrote. “In all that time, they never found even the slightest sign of illegality, while a general director of inspection of the Spanish Tax Agency allowed himself to criminalize me in a television program even before the trial was held. Can we trust that an institution will respect our presumption of innocence when it condemns us publicly before the sentence?”
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She continued, “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. When I really had to do so, I declared myself a Spanish tax resident and if you add up all the amounts I paid voluntarily and the unjustified fines, you will see that the Spanish State kept a sum greater than my total earnings from those years.”
Shakira and Piqué eventually ended their decade-long relationship in June 2022 before the “Hips Don’t Lie” musician relocated to the United States with their kids. Piqué, meanwhile, still lives in Spain but has retired from pro soccer.