RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: More from that OZschwitz gulag: Almost 100 Afghan detainees escape immigration detention centre  Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:14 am | |
| His lawyers had begged him to be a little less punchy but in his first public utterance since being grounded by the Tax Office, Paul Hogan vowed to fight the buggers even with one hand tied behind his back.
The 70-year-old actor threatened to sue the Tax Office, the Australian Crime Commission and the government, calling them cretins with no class after they used a visit for his mother's funeral to impose a departure prohibition order on him, preventing him from flying home to the United States.
He told A Current Affair last night that authorities were planning to bankrupt him by keeping him here and seizing his assets so that he would have to give up the fight over a tax bill reported to be nearly $100 million.
''That's the plan. It sounds devious, I know, but that's the fact,'' Hogan said.
The entertainer is under investigation as part of the Operation Wickenby probe into offshore tax avoidance schemes. He has been issued with an amended assessment, of which he said he could pay only 10 per cent by selling everything - but ''bugger 'em''.
Australian authorities, he said, were ''absolutely desperate to nail some high-profile character with money'' to justify the $300 million expense of Wickenby, which has recovered $193.31 million in tax collections since 2006.
It has charged 57 people, convicted 10 and has 24 criminal investigations continuing.
Threatening to sue the Australian authorities for a malicious prosecution, he described as a ''cretin'' the person who labelled him a flight risk and grounded him. Hogan said he had returned to Australia more than once each year since the seven-year-old investigation began.
''If I was a tax evader, which I'm not, I must be the dumbest one in the world to keep coming back here,'' he said. ''The last time I put in my tax I was … working on the Harbour Bridge. After that it got too complicated for me to ever do it.''
Since stardom arrived, when he ''probably went past David Jones'' in income, he had never asked his financial advisers about the destination of his money and ''just rather stupidly trusted the experts'', he said.
''You hire people to do that because I'm the goose that lays the golden egg. I don't make money by sitting around working out, 'Ooh, if I shipped over to Lithuania …'''
He repeated his denial of allegations that he had used offshore trusts to avoid tax and had lied about his residency for tax purposes. He had in fact paid ''more than a wise businessman would've'' in Australia.
In the only meeting where he gave instructions about his tax, after moving to the United States in 1988, he said he opted to keep paying tax in Australia, though US authorities put a stop to it seven years later.
The allegation that he had been stateless for tax purposes arose because he and wife, Linda Kozlowski, had moved back to the US to be with her dying mother, he said.
''My lawyer has advised me that it's not helping the case to call them boofheads and things like that,'' he said, later admitting that ''it's sort of backfired''.
''I make light of it because if I don't make light of it … I will just be this angry, seething old man. I just want two hands to fight with.''
ANCAPS: ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS |
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