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TAX FRAUD

Prosecutors in Spain call for eight-year sentence for Shakira

Prosecutors in Barcelona said Friday that they would seek a prison sentence of more than eight years against global music superstar Shakira, after she rejected a plea deal on accusations of tax evasion.

shakira tax spain
Shakira's defence team argues she moved to Spain full time only in 2015 and has met all tax obligations. (Photo by Roy Rochlin / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

Prosecutors are demanding a fine of nearly €24 million on the 45-year-old “Hips don’t Lie” songstress, who is accused of defrauding the Spanish tax office out of €14.5 million ($14.7 million) on income earned between 2012 and 2014.

The court will now need to decide on holding a trial and set a date.

Prosecutors say Shakira moved to Spain in 2011 when her relationship with FC Barcelona defender Gerard Piqué became public but maintained official tax residency in the Bahamas until 2015.

Shakira has slammed the “complete violation of her rights” and “abusive methods” by the prosecutors and say they were “insisting on claiming money earned during my international tours and the show ‘The Voice'” on which she was a judge in the United States, when she was “not yet resident in Spain”.

READ MORE: Shakira rejects plea deal to prove tax fraud innocence in Spanish court

Shakira was on the singing competition show between 2013 and 2014.

Shakira’s defence team argues she moved to Spain full time only in 2015 and has met all tax obligations.

She says she has paid €17.2 million to the Spanish tax authorities and she has “no debt to the treasury for many years”.

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CRIME

Dutch woman arrested over shooting of right-wing Spanish politician

A Dutch woman was arrested in the Netherlands in relation to an attack on a right-wing Spanish politician who was shot in Madrid, Spanish police said on Tuesday.

Dutch woman arrested over shooting of right-wing Spanish politician

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a founder of Spain’s far-right Vox party, was shot in the face in broad daylight near his home in the upscale Salamanca neighbourhood on November 9 by a motorcycle passenger.

Long a supporter of the Iranian opposition, the 78-year-old Vidal-Quadras has accused the Iranian regime of involvement in the shooting.

Four people had already been arrested as part of the investigation into the shooting, but the suspected gunman — a French national of Tunisian origin with several previous convictions in France — remains at large.

“A woman was arrested in Holland for her alleged participation in the financing and preparation of the attack on Vidal-Quadras,” the national police said in a brief statement.

Police said she was detained after Spain issued a European arrest warrant.

Vidal-Quadras was a member and then vice-president of the European Parliament between 1994 and 2014.

He was also a former head of the centre-right People’s Party in Catalonia.

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