Shakira claims the allegations of tax evasion leveled against her are “false.”

The 45-year-old pop star faces up to eight years in prison after allegedly racking up six separate counts of tax fraud totaling £12.2 million.

She has now decided to fight the allegations, claiming that she did not spend more than 183 days in the country, allowing the Spanish government to consider her an official citizen.

She said: “I have to fight for what I believe; because these are false accusations. First of all, I didn’t spend 183 days per year at that time at all. I was busy fulfilling my professional commitments around the world. Second, I’ve paid everything they claimed I owed, even before they filed a lawsuit. So as of today, I owe zero to them. And finally, I was advised by one of the four biggest tax specialist firms in the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers, so I was confident that I was doing things correctly and transparently from day one.”

The ‘Objection’ hitmaker, who is also facing a £19.2 million fine, went on to call the Spanish government’s claims “fictitious” and claimed that the authorities frequently do this to celebrities as well as the “regular taxpayer.”

She told ELLE: “However, even without evidence to support these fictional claims, as they usually do, they’ve resorted to a salacious press campaign to try to sway people, and apply pressure in the media along with the threat of reputational damage in order to coerce settlement agreements. It is well known that the Spanish tax authorities do this often not only with celebrities like me (or [Cristiano] Ronaldo, Neymar, [Xabi] Alonso, and many more), but it also happens unjustly to the regular taxpayer. It’s just their style. But I’m confident that I have enough proof to support my case and that justice will prevail in my favour.”

The GRAMMY Award-winning singer, born Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll in Colombia, is accused of faking a foreign address in order to avoid paying taxes, despite moving to Barcelona in 2011 to be with her ex.

Gerard Piqué, a 35-year-old Spanish footballer with whom she has two sons, Milan, nine, and Sasha, seven.

Tax inspectors are said to have spent more than a year following up on the ‘Whenever, Wherever’ singer, even visiting her regular hairdressers in Barcelona before scouring her social media for evidence that she spent the majority of the three years in dispute in Spain.