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Shakira pays €20 million to settle Spanish tax debt

Superstar Shakira has handed over more than €20 million ($24.6 million) to tax authorities in Spain, a report said Tuesday, accused of not paying taxes despite being a resident between 2011 and 2014.

Published: 27 February 2018 15:33 CET
Shakira pays €20 million to settle Spanish tax debt

Catalan daily El Periodico reported that the Colombian award-winning singer had paid the money “to settle part of the debt claimed by Spain's tax authorities”, corresponding to what she allegedly owes for 2011.   

The fiscal authorities filed an official complaint to prosecutors in Barcelona accusing her of not paying taxes, sparking an investigation, Jose Miguel Company, spokesman for the prosecutors' office, told AFP.   

The official complaint only covers the period from 2012 to 2014, however, as the time frame to prosecute alleged tax offences in 2011 has expired.    

READ: Waka Waka: Shakira faces tax probe in Spain

 

Happy 2018!

A post shared by Gerard Piqué (@3gerardpique) on Dec 31, 2017 at 3:19pm PST

 

In a relationship since 2011 with FC Barcelona centre-back Gerard Pique, with whom she has two sons, the 41-year-old transferred her official residency to the Catalan city in 2015.

Until then, it was in the Bahamas.   

But “that doesn't match reality, with the children in school in Barcelona and her partner here,” Company said, adding that prosecutors will decide in June whether to pursue the case.

Shakira's representatives, meanwhile, say that until 2014 she earned most of her money in international tours and didn't live more than six months a year in Spain — a prerequisite to be an official tax-paying resident in the country.

With her mix of Latin and Arabic rhythms and rock influences, Shakira is one of the biggest acts from Latin America, scoring major global hits with songs such as “Hips Don't Lie” and “Whenever, Wherever.”    

She has sold more than 60 million records.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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