Luciano Pavarotti In Shtuck With The Tax Police Again

Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

19 February 2001

Despite a deal made last year with the Italian tax authorities, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti is once again headed for the tax court to answer accusations of tax evasion.

In last July's settlement, Pavarotti agreed to pay $5m immediately and another $7m in instalments over a two-year period. In an engagement afterwards perhaps unforeseen by Rossini when he wrote his 'Il Turco in Italia', the tenor was photographed shaking hands with the Italian Finance Minister, Ottaviano del Turco. "I feel light of heart and of wallet," said Pavarotti.

Now a judge in the 65-year-old singer's birthplace of Modena has ordered him to appear in court on May 2. This latest attack on Pavarotti results from a campaign being waged by a group of international fiscal investigators against artists, sports stars and businessmen who claim residence in the tax haven of Monaco.

The Modena authorities say that Pavarotti earns about $35m a year, and that his residence is clearly in Modena. Said Eleonora De Marco, the Modena public prosecutor: "the centre of his interests is not Monte Carlo but Modena, given that he has houses, family, and investments in six banks in the city, and in 11 companies which answer to him." The singers Italian assets are said to include a residence and show-jumping complex near Modena, a villa where his former wife Adua lives with their daughters, and a farmhouse on the Adriatic Coast with six bedrooms, parkland and a pool.

Pavarotti says that "I pay my taxes where I sing" and that he is a genuine resident of Monte Carlo. But at a preliminary hearing last week, the prosecutor produced a recording of an Italian television programme in which the tenor seemed to be having difficulty in indicating the whereabouts of his Monte Carlo property on a photograph.

Massimo Leone, Pavarotti's lawyer, said that Pavarotti would fight the accusations against him: "Only the guilty give in, and the maestro is not guilty," he said.

Last autumn, the tenor cancelled two concerts in Germany, supposedly due to problems with tax officials. Along with Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Montserrat Caballe, he had been accused of helping German concert promoter Matthias Hoffmann evade taxes. Hoffmann - who has organised concerts for the singers - went on trial on fraud and tax evasion charges in October accused of using unreported payments and shell companies in Ireland, London and elsewhere to evade payments.

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