Shakira, a Colombian singer, and Gerard Pique, a defender for FC Barcelona, confirmed their breakup on Saturday.
The 45-year-old “Hips Don’t Lie” vocalist is one of the most well-known figures in the music industry, having sold more than 60 million albums worldwide. Pique, 35, is a three-time Champions League winner with Barcelona, having won the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 European Championship.The couple had been living together on the outskirts of Barcelona for years and had two sons.
“We hate to inform you that we will be splitting up. We request respect for (our) privacy for the sake of our children’s safety, which is our top priority “In a statement, they stated.
Shakira, a three-time Grammy winner with a combination of Latin and Arabic rhythms and rock influences, is one of Latin America’s biggest artists, with songs like “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Whenever, Wherever” garnering massive global hits. She performed with Jennifer Lopez at the NFL’s Super Bowl championship game halftime show in Miami in 2020, which is normally one of the most-watched half-hours on US television. The couple announced their split barely over a week after a Barcelona court dismissed Shakira’s appeal, bringing her closer to facing tax fraud charges in Spain.
Prosecutors in Spain accuse her of defrauding the Spanish tax authority of 14.5 million euros ($15.5 million) in income received between 2012 and 2014.
They claim she moved to Spain in 2011 after her connection with Pique became public, but she kept her legal Bahamas tax residency until 2015.
Her defence attorneys claim she only came to Spain full-time in 2015 and that her “tax behaviour has always been faultless in all the nations she has had to pay taxes in.” Shakira told AFP in 2019 that losing her voice two years prior was “the saddest time of her life” and had “seriously damaged” her. She eventually recovered her voice without the need for surgery, as physicians had advised, and went on to perform a world tour in 2018.
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