Yeah. See, the way that the Spanish tax office works is that the state workers get paid a bonus for incriminating people, independently of whether the accused are in the end found guilty or not. There's also no real penalty for falsely accusing someone otherwise, so they freely pressure and extort innocent people out of their money. Mostly the rich and famous, as they can rob them out of more︀ cash than the rest of us chumps, but not exclusively. If they refuse to pay,︁ or try to take it to court to prove their innocence, they send the state-affiliated︂ press to smear them. In the end, the damage to their reputation/image/brand is usually bigger︃ than the money they lose by just paying up, so they end up doing just︄ that. It's all sorts of fucked up, but extremely common. See the Xabi Alonso case.︅
Fun fact, even though most people don't bother, as I mentioned, the Spanish taxman loses︆ more than half of the cases that get taken to court. I'm sure that we︇ won't see as many news headlines if Shakira ends up winning this one, though 😉
