Shakira accuses the Tax Agency of violating her rights by requesting medical information

"The Tax Agency has been forced to resort to extremely weak evidence, as well as measures that violate the right to privacy, such as requests to medical centers to obtain confidential information such as appointments and analytical results.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
25 November 2022 Friday 08:45
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Shakira accuses the Tax Agency of violating her rights by requesting medical information

"The Tax Agency has been forced to resort to extremely weak evidence, as well as measures that violate the right to privacy, such as requests to medical centers to obtain confidential information such as appointments and analytical results."

The defense brief presented this morning by Shakira's defense before the investigating court 2 of Esplugues de Llobregat for the six tax crimes of which the Public Prosecutor's Office, the State Attorney's Office - which acts on behalf of the Agency Tax – and the Generalitat de Catalunya denounces the malpractice that the Tax Agency would have followed to demonstrate its presence in Spain.

The text indicates that, to substantiate its accusations, the public tax collection body has required special protection information from various medical centers. With this, he would try to demonstrate the presence of the artist on certain days in order to demonstrate that Shakira was a resident in Spain between 2012 and 2014, the subject of litigation.

The defense argues that the singer did not reside in Spain during that period, in which she never spent more than 183 days a year in the country, a necessary legal requirement for her to be legally considered a tax resident. And that it was she who decided to voluntarily establish her residence in Barcelona in 2015, before the Tax Agency began any inspection of her previous economic activity.

In fact, the defense brief states that it was not until that year, when her second child was born and when she had to send her first to school, that she decided to settle in Barcelona with her ex-partner, former soccer player Gerard Piqué. A decision that "was expressly communicated to the AEAT for the appropriate purposes, which accepted it without discussion, thus assuming that until that date he had not resided in our country."

The text adds that Shakira has already paid 90 million euros to the Spanish Treasury, despite having generated barely 2% of her business in Spain. This amount also includes the more than 17 that the prosecution demands plus the interest on late payment, which she paid as a sign of goodwill.

The defense – led by Pau Molins after the resignation of David Velázquez – considers that what the prosecution is looking for, which has summoned dozens of people as witnesses, although Gerard Piqué does not appear among them, is an "exemplary" trial. A kind of media circus similar to the process against Lola Flores and her husband, Antonio González, the Pescaílla, also for tax offenses in the 80s of the last century.

Shakira is exposed to a request for six prison sentences that add up to 8 years and two months for not having paid both the personal income tax and the wealth tax between 2012 and 2014, which is collected by the Generalitat. As these are sentences of less than two years and she does not have a criminal record, she should not go to prison, even if she is convicted of all the crimes.