Shakira will follow the tax fraud trial from Miami and will only go to Barcelona on the day she declares

Shakira, last March in New York with one of her children. MEGA (Getty)

Shakira will limit her presence to the essential minimum at the tax fraud trial that is expected to take place at the end of this year in Barcelona.

The court will allow the singer to be absent from all the trial sessions, except one, as judicial sources have explained to EL PAÍS.

She will only have to go in person on the day that she has to testify, as she was accused, for the alleged fraud of 14.5 million euros to the Treasury.

As the room anticipates that there will be a live institutional signal, Shakira will have the opportunity to follow the course of the oral hearing from her house in Miami, where she remains with her children after her separation from the former Barça soccer player Gerard Pique.

The Prosecutor's Office requests eight years and two months in prison for Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll (real name of the artist) for six tax offenses committed between 2012 and 2014, in addition to paying a fine of 23.7 million.

The law provides that defendants facing sentences of more than two years' imprisonment are present at the trial.

But there is some leeway.

Judge José Manuel del Amo, who will preside over the court and will be the rapporteur for the sentence, accepts that Shakira will be absent from practically all the trial sessions due to her professional commitments and for having established her residence in the United States.

Last Thursday, the magistrate summoned the parties involved in the case —the Prosecutor's Office, the State Attorney's Office and the lawyers of Shakira, Pau Molins and Míriam Company— to an appearance to organize a complex trial that will arouse great media appetite.

Del Amo accepted the defense request that the singer only have to attend "one or two days" to the trial, in Barcelona, ​​coinciding with her statement, and will also allow her to testify when it suits her best depending on her schedule: in first (this is the usual practice in courts), last (once the rest of the tests have been practiced) or even in some intermediate session.

There are precedents.

Last October, that same magistrate of the Sixth Section of the Barcelona Court presided over a trial against another international star: Neymar, charged (and later acquitted) for alleged irregularities in his transfer to Barça.

Del Amo allowed the Brazilian forward to fulfill his commitments with PSG and sit on the bench only to complete the process of his statement.

The defense also requested that some of the witnesses linked to Shakira —those who reside in Colombia or the United States— testify via videoconference.

The witnesses and the calendar

The appearance served to order an oral hearing for which some 200 witnesses are expected to attend right now.

The parties agreed to renounce a substantial part of them —the less relevant ones;

for example, residents of the apartment on Muntaner street in Barcelona where Shakira and Piqué initially lived together— to speed up the sessions.

The magistrate also announced the date scheduled for the start of the trial (November 20), which will last for more than a dozen sessions until well into the month of December.

The schedule, however, is provisional and may vary depending on the witnesses that are finally proposed and accepted.

The main battle in the case is to determine whether, between 2012 and 2014, Shakira was a resident of Spain and therefore had to pay her taxes here.

The Tax Agency and the Prosecutor's Office believe so and conclude that, in that period, she stopped paying 14.5 million in personal income tax and companies.

The Barranquilla singer, on the other hand, clings to the fact that she traveled the world for work.

And she insists that, although she had started a sentimental relationship with the former Barcelona defender, she visited Barcelona sporadically and in no case did she spend more than half a year in Spain, a requirement established by law for a citizen to be considered a resident fiscal.

The singer assures that she did not live permanently in the Catalan capital until the end of 2014, coinciding with the schooling of her first child,

Shakira has firmly maintained her innocence from the beginning.

After Piqué's separation, and coinciding with the final phase of the judicial investigation, her lawyers explored the possibility of an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office.

Both parties worked on a draft.

In exchange for admitting her guilt and paying a hefty fine, the singer saw a reduced prison sentence, which warded off the risk of ending up behind bars.

That route, however, was closed with a bang in the summer of 2022: the artist accused the Prosecutor's Office of "intransigent" and of using "improper means" to pressure her.

Although the conviction of his innocence has not changed, his personal circumstances have.

Shakira now resides in Miami and intends to leave behind as soon as possible a criminal process that, in addition to involving enormous media exposure, associates with her time with Piqué, defender of fighting to the end with the Tax Agency and to whom she attributed, in her song with Bizarrap, some responsibility in the process ("you left me with the debt in the Treasury").

Although relations with the Prosecutor's Office were touched, neither the defense (which has changed hands) nor the accusations close the door to a last-minute pact.

So far, however, no step in that direction has been taken.

If the pact were to arrive, Shakira would have to attend the first and only session of the hearing to ratify it anyway.

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