Shakira set to fight £12m tax fraud case as she is ‘confident’ of innocence

The ‘Hips Don’t Line’ singer, 45, is accused of defrauding the Spanish treasury out of a fortune over a three-year period from 2012 to 2014 and faces up to eight years’ jail if convicted.

News of the case broke on Friday night (29.07.22), but a representative for the mum-of-two has now spoken out about how Shakira intends to battle case.

They said Shakira in a statement Shakira is “confident” she will be proven innocent.

Insisting their client – who has an estimated net worth of £250 million – insisted she has “always abided by the law”.

They added: “Shakira is confident that her innocence will be proven by the end of the judicial process.”

Prosecutors want the maximum sentence over six separate counts of tax fraud totalling £12.2 million.

The charges were contained in an indictment submitted by prosecutors to the investigating court near Barcelona.

As well as an eight-year prison sentence, state prosecutors want the mum-of-two to be fined £19.2 million.

Shakira – born Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll – is accused of pretending to live abroad to avoid paying tax despite moving to Barcelona in 2011 to be with her ex, 35-year-old Spanish footballer Gerard Piqué, with whom she has two children.

She has already paid an estimated £2.5 million to the Spanish taxman.

Shakira, previously living in the Bahamas, registered as a full tax resident in Spain in 2015.

Official residents in Spain pay Spanish taxes on their worldwide income and people who spent more than 183 days in a calendar year there are considered Spanish residents for tax purposes.

Tax inspectors spent more than a year checking up on the singer and even visited her favourite hairdressers in Barcelona and trawled her social media to try to show she spent most of the three years in dispute in Spain.

They concluded she had spent 242 days in Spain in 2012, 212 days in 2013 and 243 days in the country in 2014.

The report prosecutors submitted alleged the time she spent out of Spain were “sporadic absences” linked to work.

Shakira has denied any wrongdoing.