Shakira Addresses Tax Fraud and Gerard Piqué Divorce Scandals in Exclusive Letter: English Version
Here is the translated letter published by the artist in the Spanish newspaper 'El Mundo'
Shakira’s private life has not gone unnoticed over the past year. Following her divorce from former Catalan soccer player Gerard Piqué, the Colombian singer has remained in the spotlight. She has been in the public eye both for singing about the infidelity she experienced when her ex-husband met his current partner, Clara Chía, and for being accused of tax fraud in Spain. Now, the artist has decided to address these two scandals in a letter she penned herself.
The text was exclusively published in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and seems to be both an appeal and a response to the media and Spanish society.
#Exclusiva 🔵 ‘Contarla para vivir’, la verdad de Shakira sobre su guerra con Hacienda: «Pacté para proteger a mis hijos, no por cobardía ni por culpabilidad»
✍ Por Shakira https://t.co/CHxHDlnyaD
— EL MUNDO (@elmundoes) September 4, 2024
For context, in May 2024, the court in Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain), where the artist had resided with Piqué for the past decade, decided to dismiss the case against Shakira for alleged tax fraud in Spain in 2018. The decision was made because the judge indicated that there was “no evidence” that the artist had “consciously and voluntarily omitted information and documentation” regarding her 2018 tax declaration.
However, this is not the only legal case affecting the Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2024) author. In November 2023, Shakira accepted a conviction for defrauding the Spanish Tax Agency of €14.5 million between 2012 and 2014, agreeing to a minimal sentence of one year for each of the three tax offenses and a fine of €7.3 million.
Although money is not the main issue here, considering that Shakira is one of the richest Latin artists in 2024, she has faced intense public scrutiny, which she addresses in this letter.
“In 2023, I lived surrounded by cameras eagerly waiting to show the world how I would break down. No detail was missed: the tax trial, the media-driven divorce… it was too juicy a spectacle to pass up. But the most frustrating part was realizing that a state institution seemed more interested in publicly burning me at the stake than in hearing my reasons. Well, I believe it’s time to share them,” the letter begins.
In the letter, the Colombian singer claims that the Spanish Tax Agency created a “fabricated narrative,” indicating that it had “arbitrarily criminalized those it saw fit.” She refers to the institution’s interpretation that she had stayed in Spain without fulfilling the necessary tax obligations, a theory she calls “a sexist prejudice.”
“If the singer had been an American man, fallen in love with a Spanish woman, and visited her regularly, I find it hard to believe that the Tax Agency would have considered that he had the intent to establish residency. There is a structural sexism that assumes a woman can only follow a man, even when it’s not in her best interest,” the artist argues. “But the Tax Agency is not trying to punish those who don’t comply; rather, it seeks to display hunting trophies to rebuild its damaged credibility.”
The Latin star goes on to state that she has always fulfilled her obligations, even being investigated by institutions like the White House and the IRS, which “never found the slightest sign of illegality.” Nevertheless, she says she accepted the tax fraud conviction in 2023 for the sake of her family. “At that moment, I decided to settle for my children,” she writes.
Shakira’s Full Letter Translated to English
«In 2023, I lived surrounded by cameras eagerly waiting to show the world how I would break down. No detail was missed: the tax trial, the media-driven divorce… it was too juicy a spectacle to pass up. But the most frustrating part was realizing that a state institution seemed more interested in publicly burning me at the stake than in hearing my reasons. Well, I believe it’s time to share them.
From the start, I knew that the fabricated narrative by the Tax Agency confused and manipulated two completely different intentions: one was the desire to establish oneself in a country, and the other, very different, was the desire to make a relationship flourish in that country. They conflated the two to classify me as a tax resident since 2011, creating obligations that didn’t exist. Now I understand, because I lived it firsthand, that an institution created to serve citizens should not use all its power and resources to arbitrarily criminalize whoever it chooses. But everyone knows that romance sells well.
In 2011, I wanted my relationship with Gerard Piqué to flourish, as he was then tied to Spain for work reasons. However, traveling to Spain created many complications for me, as it forced me to be far from my centers of work activity. Whenever I returned, it was to nurture that relationship, not out of a «desire to stay.» This strategy is underpinned by a sexist prejudice. If the singer had been an American man, fallen in love with a Spanish woman, and visited her regularly, I find it hard to believe that the Tax Agency would have considered that he had the intent to establish residency. There is a structural sexism that assumes a woman can only follow a man, even when it’s not in her best interest. This sexism still exists in certain sectors of state bureaucracy, in a society that—thankfully—now thinks differently.
Some technicians from the Spanish Tax Agency presented a childish and moralistic story in which I was a singer avoiding my tax obligations, while they were the representatives of justice and decency. The reality was very different: I always fulfilled my obligations. My finances were investigated by institutions as trustworthy as the White House or the IRS and approved by other European Union countries. During all that time, they never found the slightest sign of illegality, while a director-general of inspection from the Spanish Tax Agency allowed himself to criminalize me on a television program even before the trial took place. Can we trust that an institution will respect our presumption of innocence when it condemns us publicly before the verdict?
But the Tax Agency isn’t trying to punish those who don’t comply; it’s trying to display hunting trophies to restore its tarnished credibility. And how do they achieve this? By intimidating people, threatening them with prison, compromising our children’s peace of mind, and pressuring us to break down. They tried to make the public believe that I wasn’t paying my taxes when the truth is I paid much more than I owed. When it was truly appropriate, I declared myself a tax resident of Spain, and if you add up all the amounts I paid voluntarily and the unjustified fines, you’ll see that the Spanish state took a sum greater than my total earnings for those years.
It may seem incomprehensible, but for me, the Spanish decade was a financially lost decade—not because I worked little, as everyone knows. I gave 120 concerts in 90 different cities. How can someone who gives 120 concerts lose money? It sounds strange, I know, but today my wealth consists of what I earned before arriving in Spain and what I earned after leaving. Everything I earned during those years was taken by the Spanish state.
When in 2015 I decided to live in Spain under the impatriate regime, the Tax Agency admitted that for the previous 10 years, I had not been a resident, only to then immediately try to charge me for those years. What seemed like a polite way to formalize my situation turned into a trap. In the case of 2011, the strategy is particularly scandalous because I only spent 73 days in Spain, when the minimum established by law to be a tax resident is 183 days. A person who is constantly touring the world cannot have the intent to reside fiscally in one place just because the person they’re in a relationship with lives there. It would be like thinking that a tourist passing through Ibiza on vacation has to become a tax resident just because they had a local romance.
Some may wonder why I bother making these statements now. The first reason is my children. We’ve had to live in an era marked by a tone of state arrogance, but intimidating people is not the same as giving them reasons. Intimidation is not the same as convincing people. If they want us to believe in institutions, they should convince us that institutions believe in us. Burning a public figure at the stake every year, as if it were an Inquisition process to recover lost prestige, is not the solution.
I want to leave my children the legacy of a woman who calmly explained her reasons in her own time when she deemed it necessary, not when she was forced to do so. I need them to know that I made the decisions I made to protect them, to be by their side, and to continue with my life. Not out of cowardice or guilt. I want them to understand that my love for Spain and my dear Spanish friends and family still endures, but not everything is the same. Sometimes, the commitment to the truth is more important than one’s own comfort. If at that moment, I decided to settle for my children, now I decide to speak because it is what my conscience demands of me.
The second reason is the need to write my own story. My dear friend Gabriel García Márquez, whom I miss so much, titled his memoirs ‘Living to Tell the Tale.’ Literature was so important to him that he thought he lived to tell it. Well, similarly, I «tell it to live,» to regain my life, so that no one writes my story for me. Just like with my songs, I sing to live peacefully again, to turn the page.
Sometimes a song wins many awards and fame, but those are not necessarily the most beloved songs. The most beloved are the ones that help us build ourselves, the ones we
secretly turn to when we want to remember who we are, and also the ones we use to let others know. Well, in this little article, there is more truth about me than in everything published in 2023. The officials of the Tax Agency who judged me might not like reading this, but frankly, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t write it for them».