A Spanish court has acquitted pop star Shakira in a tax fraud dispute, ruling Monday that authorities failed to prove the Colombian singer was a legal resident of Spain in 2011.
The Madrid-based High Court found that Spanish tax authorities could only establish Shakira lived in the country 163 days that year—falling short of the 183-day threshold required to qualify as a tax resident, according to court documents. The Treasury must now reimburse the singer roughly 60 million euros (nearly $70 million), including interest, according to her attorney, José Luís Prada.
"There was never any fraud, and the Tax Agency itself was never able to prove otherwise, simply because it wasn't true," Shakira said in a statement provided by her lawyers.
Prada called the eight-year legal battle an "unacceptable toll, reflecting a lack of rigor in administrative practices.”
Spanish authorities had argued Shakira's relationship with retired soccer star Gerard Piqué anchored her to Spain, but the court rejected that claim, ruling the relationship carried no legal equivalence to marriage and that her main economic interests were not proven to be Spain-based.
The tax agency had contended that the singer's romantic ties to Piqué, who has since retired from professional soccer, effectively made Spain the center of her personal and financial life. The High Court disagreed, finding no legal basis to conclude that "the main center or base" of Shakira's activities or economic interests in 2011 were directly or indirectly located in Spain. In addition to the reimbursement of taxes paid, the court also ordered the government to return more than 55 million euros ($64 million) in fines it had wrongly imposed.
Monday's ruling is not Shakira's first brush with Spain's tax authorities. In 2023, the Grammy-winning artist reached a deal with Spanish prosecutors to sidestep a separate trial over allegations she failed to pay roughly 14.5 million euros (then $15.8 million) in Spanish income taxes between 2012 and 2014. Under that agreement, Shakira accepted the charges and paid an additional 7.3 million euros (then $8 million) on top of the previously unpaid taxes and accrued interest.
The singer had also been named in the 2017 "Paradise Papers"—a leak of financial documents that exposed the offshore tax strategies of high-profile figures worldwide, including pop icons Madonna and U2 frontman Bono.
Over the past decade, Spanish tax officials have secured convictions against soccer superstars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for tax evasion. Both players were found guilty but avoided prison under a Spanish legal provision allowing judges to suspend sentences of under two years for first-time offenders.
The court ruled that Messi did not need "to have full knowledge of all accounting or corporate transactions or the exact amount of the fraud" to have had a clear understanding of an intent to defraud. The investigation centered on allegations that Messi's father, Jorge Horacio Messi, failed to pay approximately 4 million euros ($5.3 million) in taxes between 2007 and 2009. Jorge Messi then submitted a payment exceeding 5 million euros ($6.6 million) in August 2013 to settle the alleged unpaid taxes and interest.