Colombian star Shakira, who is accused of involvement in a tax evasion operation in Spain, announced on Wednesday that she refused to conclude an agreement with the Public Prosecution Office.

Shakira's agents stated that the possibility of reaching an agreement remains open until the start of the trial before a court in Barcelona (northeast Spain), noting that the decision to officially refer the 45-year-old star to the court has not yet been issued. 

The lawyers stated in a statement that Shakira "is absolutely confident of her innocence (...) does not accept" an agreement with the Public Prosecution and decided to continue "the procedures until the trial. They stressed that the singer is "confident that the judiciary will prove that she is right."

Agence France-Presse was not immediately able to obtain comment from the public prosecutor. 

The statement quoted Shakira denouncing the "total violation" of her rights and the "arbitrary methods" used by the Public Prosecution Office, which "insists on claiming the money" that the singer earned during her world tours and from the "The Voice" program, which she was a member of the jury in its American version in the states. the United States when she was not "yet residing in Spain".

Shakira also confirmed that she had previously paid 17.2 million euros to the Spanish tax authorities, and therefore no longer had "any debts to the Treasury for several years."

Prosecutors accuse the singer of evading taxes worth 14.5 million euros for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014.

The Public Prosecution says that Shakira has been living in Spain since 2011, the year in which Shakira announced her relationship with Barcelona football star Gerard Pique, but she kept her tax headquarters in the Bahamas, classified as a tax haven, until 2015. Pique and Shakira announced in June Last June, they separated after a relationship of more than a decade that produced two children.

Shakira's lawyers say most of her income until 2014 came from her world tours, and that she did not live for periods of more than six months a year in Spain, a condition for determining her tax residency in the country. 

And a court in Barcelona announced last May that it had rejected a request submitted by the singer to stop the prosecutions against her, on the grounds that she had not been residing in Spain during the years covered by the tax evasion charge, but that her tax headquarters was at the time in the Bahamas.

Shakira's name was mentioned in the so-called "Pandora Papers", a wide investigation published at the end of 2021 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in which hundreds of people were accused of hiding assets in offshore companies, especially for the purpose of tax evasion.