Shakira has won. After eight years of legal battles, public scrutiny, and what she describes as orchestrated campaigns to destroy her reputation, Spain’s National High Court has acquitted the Colombian superstar of tax fraud related to her 2011 income. The ruling overturns a €55 million fine — roughly $64 million — imposed by the Spanish tax agency in 2021. The Spanish government must now return over €60 million, approximately $70 million, to the singer.
The court ruled on Monday, May 18th. Authorities were unable to prove that Shakira spent the minimum 183 days in Spain required for residents to pay personal income tax in 2011. Without that proof, the fraud charge could not stand. The ruling covers only the 2011 tax year and does not affect subsequent periods.
Shakira, 49, did not hold back in her response. “After more than eight years of enduring brutal public targeting, orchestrated campaigns to destroy my reputation, and sleepless nights that ultimately impacted my health and my family’s well-being, the National High Court has finally set the record straight,” she said in a statement. “There was never any fraud, and the Administration itself could never prove otherwise, simply because it wasn’t true.”
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Eight Years, Two Cases, One Final Verdict
The Spanish tax agency had previously argued that Shakira’s ties to the country — rooted in her long-term relationship with former professional footballer Gerard Piqué, with whom she shares sons Milan, 13, and Sasha, 11 — were enough to establish residency. The court disagreed.
This ruling is the latest chapter in a prolonged and complicated legal saga. In November 2023, Shakira agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine and avoided a potential prison sentence after being accused of six counts of tax fraud for failing to pay €14.5 million in income taxes between 2012 and 2014. She maintained her innocence at the time but settled for the sake of her sons. In May 2024, Spanish prosecutors separately dropped tax fraud charges related to her 2018 income.
Monday’s acquittal relates to the earliest of the disputed years — and it is the most significant legal victory of the three.
Her lawyer described the eight-year process as an ordeal that took “an unacceptable toll” and called out what he described as a deeply flawed administrative practice that ordinary taxpayers — without Shakira’s resources — are rarely able to fight. “Shakira had the strength and resources to see this through to the end,” he said. “This modus operandi suffocates many ordinary taxpayers who do not have the means to defend themselves.”
Shakira dedicated the ruling to those people. “My greatest wish is that this ruling sets a precedent for the Treasury and serves the thousands of ordinary citizens who are abused and crushed every day by a system that presumes their guilt,” she said. “This victory is dedicated to them.”
She now returns her focus to music. The next North American leg of her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour runs through June and July, before she closes the tour with 12 shows at Madrid’s Shakira Stadium in September and October.
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