“A wolf like me always chooses family,” Shakira wrote yesterday on Instagram after agreeing with the accusations in exchange for a million-dollar fine and avoiding a trial for tax fraud. The singer was willing to fight to prove her innocence, but the exposure to which she would have been subjected with twelve sessions of one hearing in which her closest collaborators would have aired unknown aspects of her intimacy and her private life in Barcelona was a risk that the singer preferred not to take so as not to damage her reputation or the emotional stability of her children.
Yesterday, finally, after five years of conflict with the Tax Agency, he decided to reach an agreement to close one of the most difficult chapters of his life and avoid holding the trial. “My children have asked me for it. They have lived through very hard times and I want them to finally see me happy and look towards the future together,” the singer justified in a statement. In the end, the pact, negotiated by her lawyers Pau Molins and Míriam Company, has been beneficial for Shakira. He faced a sentence of eight years in prison and a fine of 23.8 million euros, which finally resulted in a sentence of three years in prison, which has been replaced by a fine of 432,000, in addition to another penalty of 7, 3 million euros for having defrauded the Treasury during the period 2012-2014. In the entire process, Shakira will have spent 24 million euros, although if she had been convicted in the trial the sum could have risen to 40 million.
The Colombian singer entered the courtroom of the Barcelona Court yesterday at ten in the morning, the exact time at which she was summoned. She walked a few meters on foot, greeted the hundred cameras that were at the courthouse doors and responded with a timid “here we go” to the question of how she was feeling. Once inside the room, in front of the magistrate José Manuel del Amo – the same one who tried and acquitted Neymar –, everything happened very quickly. In just a minute and a half the tax fraud case was settled. Shakira stood in front of the microphone to answer with three yeses that she accepted the agreement that her lawyers had signed and that she agreed with the agreed sentence.
“This decision to agree is based on personal, emotional, sentimental reasons that have nothing to do with legal matters,” said the artist in an extensive statement in which she explained that she has prioritized the happiness of her children above all else after the separation with Gerard Piqué and the move to Miami. “I have to choose my battles and the most important one for me now is to do everything so that my children live a full life and focus on what is really important: seeing them grow and spending time with them, without subjecting them to the anguish of seeing their mother in a criminal trial, with the wear and tear that entails.” And she added that after “many years of struggle” she has made the decision to agree. "I had two options: continue fighting until the end, mortgaging my peace of mind and that of my children, stop making songs, albums and tours, without being able to enjoy my career and the things I like, or make an agreement, close and leave this behind chapter of my life looking forward. "I have come to the conclusion that it is not a triumph to win if the price is having so many years of your life stolen."
Shakira, despite the fact that from now on she already has a criminal record in Spain that could cause problems in the other cases that she still has open, has achieved a prison sentence that she will not have to serve. In reality, the sentence imposed is six months in prison for six crimes of tax fraud, and for this reason she has been able to replace the sentence with a fine. The Penal Code that applies in this case established that when the penalty for each of the crimes individually does not exceed one year in prison, as is the case in this case, it can be replaced by a fine.
However, Shakira's fight with justice is not over. She still has two other pending cases that will continue to distress her for some time. The first, in the National Court, where she filed a contentious appeal after the Treasury accused her of tax fraud in the 2011 financial year. She has had to pay 60 million euros for a case that she describes as “nonsense” because that year I was not even close to being a Spanish resident. And she must also answer for another complaint from the Prosecutor's Office, similar to the case that was closed yesterday, in which the treasury accuses her of having defrauded 6.6 million euros for the income and assets declaration for the year 2018. For this The second case is waiting to be summoned by the court, but it will be offered to testify by videoconference from Miami.
