Montserrat Caballé reaches agreement over tax fraud with Spain to avoid prison
The Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé reached an agreement with the authorities to avoid jail, in exchange for pleading guilty and paying a fine.
Caballé pleads guilty to tax fraud to avoid prison
The Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé has reached an agreement with Spanish judicial authorities that, according to reports from limelight-arts.com.au, will allow her to avoid imprisonment. The singer will have to plead guilty to tax fraud and pay a substantial fine.
The case dates back to income obtained by Caballé in 2010, totalling close to two million euros from performances, which were managed irregularly through banking entities in the Principality of Andorra, a small territory located at the far northern edge of the Spanish border. The amount still outstanding to be settled with the tax authorities amounted to 500,000 euros.
Early this year, a formal accusation against the singer for tax evasion was made public: she was accused of both failure to pay that debt and falsification of legal declarations regarding her place of residence, a manoeuvre with which she had allegedly attempted to evade the substantial tax bill.
After several months of negotiations, the soprano has reached an agreement with the public prosecutor's office. It is expected that prosecutors will request a reduced prison sentence, although the likelihood of Caballé serving an effective sentence is very slight: the singer has no criminal record and enjoys the status of one of Spain's most venerated cultural icons. Caballé has already paid the outstanding sum, according to the same source.
Source: Google News MS — Crime