Prosecutors have asked for opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti to be sent for trial on tax fraud charges, it was reported yesterday.
A prosecutor in the northern Italian city of Bologna, Mr Manfredi Luongo, alleges the tenor evaded Italian tax to the tune of 10 billion lire (about £4 million) by citing a Monte Carlo address as his primary residence.
Pavarotti has had a house in the French principality since 1983 but only entered it on tax returns in 1996, prosecutors say. The Bologna investigating magistrate, Mr Alberto Ziroldi, will now decide whether to put Pavarotti on trial.
Mr Ziroldi took over the case from an earlier investigation in Pavarotti's northern home town of Modena after prosecutors there asked for it to be shelved.
Pavarotti has already been ordered to pay some 10 billion lire in back taxes for the period 1989-90 in another case which he is appealing. Pavarotti has always denied irregularities. "I'm not a tax cheat," he told reporters last year.
"I pay my taxes where I sing. It's very difficult for a singer to avoid taxes because there's a 33 per cent withholding tax on earnings."
Pavarotti says he lives in an apartment in Monte Carlo but prosecutors allege his main residences are in Modena and his holiday villa at Pesaro on the Adriatic coast.