Shakira’s long tax-fraud nightmare has ended with the government of Spain on the hook to refund nearly $70 million to the Colombian-born singer after prosecutors failed to prove she spent enough time in that country to owe it a chunk of her earnings.
Since 2018, the singer has been accused of defrauding the Spanish government in three cases, for the tax years 2011, 2012-2014 and 2018. Over the years, deals were offered, rejected and accepted; charges were dropped, other charges were filed; and an eight-year prison sentence was threatened.
Shakira maintained her innocence, saying in 2022 that “Spanish tax authorities saw that I was dating a Spanish citizen and started to salivate,” referring to her relationship with Barcelona-born footballer Gerard Piqué, the father of their sons Milan and Sasha. Piqué and the singer, who met in 2010 when she did “Waka Waka,” the official song of that year’s FIFA World Cup, separated in 2022.
A representative for the singer, whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, did not respond immediately to The Times’ request for comment on the court decision.
However, despite there being no fraud, Shakira told People on Monday in a statement that “for nearly a decade, I was treated as guilty. Every step of the process was leaked, distorted, and amplified, using my name and public image to send a threatening message to the rest of the taxpayers.”
She added, “Today, that narrative crumbles, and it does so with the full force of a court ruling.”
Everything revolved around how many days Shakira spent in Spain in the years in question. With her legal residence in the Bahamas before she declared Spain her fiscal home in 2014, she had to spend more than half the year outside of her beau’s home country to avoid paying taxes there.
“They knew I wasn’t in Spain the required time, that Spain wasn’t my place of work or my source of income, but they still came after me, with their eyes on the prize,” Shakira told Elle in 2022, adding that she was confident that justice would prevail in her favor at trial. “I have enough proof.”
The amount the Spanish government owes her includes fines and interest in addition to the money she handed over, despite having no legal obligation to pay it.
In other Shakira news, she and Burna Boy just released the 2026 FIFA World Cup song, titled “Dai Dai.”
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