Pop star Shakira has been acquitted of tax fraud by a Spanish court and is set to be refunded more than €55m in wrongly imposed fines by the government.
The ruling relates to a dispute over the 2011 tax year in which Spanish authorities failed to prove the singer was a resident of Spain, according to a court document seen by The Associated Press.
A person must spend more than 183 days in the country to be considered a tax resident in Spain, but Spanish authorities were only able to prove that Shakira lived in Spain that year for a total of 163 days, the court said.
Spain’s tax agency argued the Colombian star based her main economic activities in the country while she was in a relationship with now-retired soccer player Gerard Piqué, but the High Court ruled that it could not be proved Shakira’s activities or economic interests in 2011 were directly or indirectly located in Spain, and that her relationship could not be legally equated to a marital one.
“There was never any fraud, and the tax agency itself was never able to prove otherwise, simply because it wasn’t true,” Shakira, who had filed an appeal, said in a statement provided by her lawyers.
“This resolution comes after an eight-year ordeal that has taken an unacceptable toll, reflecting a lack of rigor in administrative practices,” her attorney, José Luís Prada, said in a statement.
In 2023, in a separate tax fraud case, Shakira struck a deal with Spanish prosecutors to avoid a trial over charges that she did not pay Spanish income tax worth €14.5m between 2012 and 2014. The singer accepted the charges and paid an additional €7.3m penalty.
