Paul Hogan shows his frustration at the scrutiny Project Wikenby has placed on him
Posted on 09/04/2010 8:24:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
PAUL Hogan is free to leave Australia after striking a deal with the tax office that included the lifting of his Departure Prohibition Order.
The veteran actor agreed to provide a "security" that would allow him to return to the US and reunite with his family, wife Linda Kozlowski and son Chance.
As Hogan makes good his departure, he knows the stakes have never been higher in the
fight to beat the authorities that form Project Wickenby, the nation's $300 million tax fraud investigation.
When banned from leaving Australia two weeks ago, on the eve of his mother's funeral, Hogan was reminded just how far the Australian Taxation Office was prepared to go in its pursuit of him.
Today, The Weekend Australian can reveal the stakes have been high from day one, and that the Wickenby forces - the Australian Federal Police, the ATO and the secretive Australian Crime Commission - have always been heavy-handed in the pursuit of their quarry.
Hogan's financial adviser, Tony Stewart, hasn't forgotten the cold June morning in 2005 when his Sydney home was raided at the crack of dawn. His wife answered the door to face 10 armed federal police officers.
She asked them to wait while she woke her sleeping children. As she turned her back to walk upstairs, the police overtook her, racing through the house in their effort to uncover documents linked to Stewart's famous clients, Hogan and his business and comedy partner John Cornell.
Stewart, whose daughter was woken by a police officer shining a torch in her face and demanding she get out of bed, has never before spoken about the events of June 9, 2005, which first signalled that Hogan and Cornell were in Wickenby's sights.
Stewart, who sat in on an interview between The Weekend Australian and Hogan this week, still can't believe the tax office began its investigation in such a manner.
"If you want to know how all this started, that's how it started," Stewart said of the dawn raid.
"From day one, they have been the aggressors and we have been on the back foot; we haven't been able to say anything."
That changed two weeks ago when the investigation, which still continues, took an extraordinary turn. Hogan, who has flown back and forth between his home in the US and Australia at least a dozen times since he discovered he was under investigation, was suddenly hit with a Departure Prohibition Order by the tax office.
Hogan had arrived in Sydney to attend the funeral of his mother, Florence, and had filled in his daughter's address on his customs card at the airport. He had only planned to stay a few days, but what he didn't know was that his movements were being tracked by the authorities and his entry into Sydney airport had triggered an alert that led to tax officers arriving at his daughter's house several hours later armed with the punitive order.
The order effectively kept Hogan, who has not been charged with any offence, a prisoner in Australia, unable to leave until yesterday when, according to Hogan's lawyer Andrew Robinson, "a cordial and co-operative meeting" led to a resolution that would see Hogan able to return to the US in return for pledging an unknown amount in security.
The DPO was a tactic that bewildered Hogan and his camp. Once it became known publicly, it was a story that was picked up worldwide. It angered and stunned the Australian actor.
"I'm not devastated - I don't do devastation," Hogan said this week. "But I am staggered by the grotesqueness of this."
The DPO was a further blow to the actor, who says he has been "smeared" as a tax dodger. He still remembers seeing his name being splashed across the front pages and as the lead items in the news in 2006, when he was identified as the number one target of Operation Wickenby.
Then treasurer Peter Costello had earlier pledged $300 million for the Wickenby investigation, and 350 extra investigators were appointed in a push to track down tax cheats.
So how had it come to this? Hogan on the front page as public enemy number one, when 20 years earlier he was being courted by the then tourism minister John Brown to do a series of ads promoting Australia as a tourist destination. Hogan was so proud to be an Australian he offered to do the ads free of charge, even though he was earning million dollar-plus pay packets in advertising campaigns for Foster's and Winfield and could have demanded - and received - a multi-million-dollar cheque for the campaign.
Brown told Hogan he had to be paid something so they agreed on a small retainer. It was in the range of $100,000, but out of this, Hogan spent about half on his expenses, according to those in Hogan's camp. The remainder of the money went to the Variety Club, a children's charity Hogan worked with at the time. For their efforts, Hogan and Brown went on to become joint Australians of the Year in 1986.
The ads put Australia on the map, and 25 years on, Hogan's famous line - "So come and say G'Day. I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you" - has become part of the national lexicon.
It's almost as famous as the "That's not a knife . . . that's a knife" line from Crocodile Dundee.
It was that 1986 movie that propelled Hogan to international stardom and into the world of the super rich.
The movie also marked the beginings of his troubles with the tax office. It was the flow of royalties from the Crocodile Dundee movies that are the focus of the current Wickenby probe.
The year 1986 is when Hogan is accused of planning tax evasion on a massive scale.
According to Hogan's accountant at the time, John Gibb, the actor's "state of mind" was to set up offshore companies to avoid paying tax.
It was this piece of evidence from Gibb that allowed the tax office to issue massive tax bills against him dating back to 1986. Gibb warned Hogan the planned offshore structure was not legal, according to a statement made by Gibb last December, which emerged last week as a central plank of the Wickenby case.
But as The Australian uncovered, that's not all Gibb told authorities. He also mentioned - in a July 2009 interview with authorities - that the advice of a top QC had been received that gave the green light to the structure. The QC is believed to be Graham Hill, widely regarded as Australia's best tax lawyer in the 1980s, who went on to become a Federal Court judge. That part of Gibb's evidence was not included in the December statement.
This changes in many ways the case against Hogan and Cornell and it is yet to be explained how the authorities are relying on only one part of what Gibb told them. A court case scheduled for November might shed more light on the issue.
Hogan was victorious yesterday, but the tax office is no easy adversary. There are still tax bills climbing toward $150m that have yet to be resolved, and Hogan still maintains his innocence.
Bump. :)
Prohibited from leaving the country? Wow, I have lived in North America too long. No one has ever stopped me or asked me to show any ID when leaving the US or Canada. There isn’t even any provision for a government check when leaving. Just pay the toll, it there is one, and leave.
I don’t think that Australia is the country that many of us thought it was.
Sadly no, major gun control laws, heavy tax laws, and regulated more than Michelle Obama's garden.
Yes, exactly the opposite of what it seemed.
Australia is now a police state.
If we keep it up with Obama and his ilk we are headed that way....Remember the IRS puchasing guns for it’s agent?
A lot of our image of Australia is the freedom of living on the Outback, very similar to the ‘Old-West’. Much of this is Hollywood as most of the ranches are big industry now owned by the Chinese. Most of the voting population is centered in five big cities (Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide). As we know here, large population centers often lean politically towards group think and collectivism versus Liberty.
I can't speak for Canada, but if you try to leave the USA (permanently) and try taking your money with you, you'll find that the government will demand a rather large share of it.
Mark
The only time I have even encountered anything close to being stopped leaving the US was one evening when agents were spread across the exit lanes. I slowed to ask if I could help them and they waved me through. Obviously, I was not the (terrorist) droid they were looking for.
Once, leaving Canada, I was stopped by a conservation officer looking for people taking too many illegally caught pickerel into Detroit. I'm not kidding.
Serves him right...for being WHITE and SUCCESSFUL. Great to live in a free country, ain’t it pal!!
That’s interesting, and it explains a lot. Thanks!
I think you know this, but for those who don’t know, Australia just had an election two weeks ago that resulted in a hung Parliament ( no decisive winner ).
The Australian Labor party ( their equivalent of the gay marriage/abortion/cap and trade supporting Democrats here ) and the Liberal Party Coalition ( their equivalent of our Republicans ) are now trying to woe the Independents ( 4 of them by last count ) in order to form a majority.
The sole GREEN party winner is now in support of the Labor Party and one Independent has leaned Labor. If the other 3 independents support the Liberals, we will in effect have a small conservative majority.
The Labor party is pro-tax ( wanted to tax the profitable “evil” mining companies with a SUPER PROFIT tax ). Their leader, Julia Gillard is a self-professed atheist who is not married to the man she lives with ( her former hairdresser ). Of course, the leader of the Green Party is an openly gay man living with his partner.
Australia is VERY DEPENDENT on a continually growing resource-hungry China and India. They escaped recession and their economy continues to grow because of this factor.
One thing in their favor is — their banks do business more conservatively than ours. They don’t have the stupid sub-prime, NINJA loan problems we had.
The color of the money is what the “state” requires you to give it. It will lock you up and confiscate all that you have so it can survive.
In reality, you can take anything you want with you when you leave.
Not true.
Try taking your own money with you ...
Ok, I’ll try this again. You don’t get stopped or checked when you exit. It’s only when you try to enter. I could have a million cash on me when I leave and no one would stop me, or know about it. It’s when you enter the country that you have to declare it.
>>>”Australia is VERY DEPENDENT on a continually growing resource-hungry China and India. They escaped recession and their economy continues to grow because of this factor.”
Only partly correct & mostly in terms of looking to Asia for growth. Btw, neither China nor India are given a carte blanche. However, the other side of the equation, just as important if not more, was because Australia’s national budget was in surplus during GFC - IOW, Australia & most Australians were not “credit happy”.
Let’s not forget the trillion dollar plus U.S. budget deficit and the main creditor for the U.S. is China.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.