Victoria’s Secret model Bar Refaeli and her mom, Tzipi Refaeli, were officially sentenced this weekend for failing to pay Israeli taxes on millions of dollars in income.
After being convicted of tax evasion in July, Bar was sentenced to nine months of community service on Sunday, while her mother was sentenced to 16 months in prison. The pair was charged with failing to pay taxes in Israel after earning $7.2 million in income between 2009 and 2012. According to the plea bargain accepted by the court, in addition to community service and prison time, they will also have to pay a $1.5 million fine on top of millions in back taxes, according to the Associated Press. Tzipi is set to begin serving her prison sentence next week.
Bar said she did not declare her income during that period of time because, according to Israeli tax law, residency is primarily determined by whether or not the person spends the majority of the year in the country. At the time, the model said she was living with her then boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio in America and could thus claim U.S. residency. However, prosecutors argued that Bar was using her on-again, off-again relationship as a cover to avoid paying Israeli taxes on millions of dollars, and the court ruled that the relationship did not qualify as a “family unit.” The pair dated from 2006 to 2011, taking a six-month break from their relationship in 2009, according to People.
Her mother was also charged with failing to report Bar’s income, avoiding paying taxes, and aiding someone else in evading tax payments. The indictment said that Tzipi, acting as her daughter’s agent, did not declare her own income and signed leases for Bar under the names of other family members so as to further obscure the model’s primary-residency status. After signing the plea bargain in June, Refaeli’s lawyers released a statement that read, “In the relevant time period, Bar was in her early 20s, was working as an international model, and was not involved in financial matters. Today she is taking responsibility for mistakes that were made.”
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