Hunt for tens of millions in Crocodile Dundee profits is on again
THE hunt for tens of millions in Crocodile Dundee profits is on again with federal prosecutors considering whether to charge Paul Hogan’s former accountant.
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THE hunt for tens of millions of dollars in Crocodile Dundee profits is on again with federal prosecutors considering whether to charge Paul Hogan’s former accountant, who thought he was in the clear.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) has revealed to News Corp Australia that the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is currently considering whether to commence proceedings against Tony Stewart, who provided financial advice to Hogan and collaborator John “Strop” Cornell for at least 15 years.
In 2005 the trio became the focus of Australia’s most expensive and high-profile tax probe after the ACIC’s forerunner, the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), raided a Melbourne hotel room and found explosive documents on a laptop. The men were investigated on suspicion of squirrelling away much of the hit films’ earnings in trusts and companies stretching from Switzerland to the Caribbean.
In 2010 the ACC dropped its investigation into Hogan and Cornell; two years later the duo and the ATO settled claims against each other without any admissions of liability. Not a single tax evasion charge has ever been laid against Hogan, Cornell or Stewart and they have always denied doing anything wrong.
When News Corp Australia told Stewart the DPP was now looking at whether to charge him, he said: “It’s news to me … I don’t know what all this is about.
“I’ve been investigated by the ACC … and I’ve been cleared. It’s over as far as I’m concerned.”
He then revealed that he too had settled with authorities, in December 2014.
Asked if there was any missing money in Swiss bank accounts, Stewart said: “I am not in a position to comment; there is a whole heap of confidentiality agreements and also I was a professional adviser to Paul and John and in that regard I still have a professional responsibility to them.
“There are sort of handcuffs on me and I have to keep my mouth shut.”
The revelations that Stewart had settled yet is in the crosshairs once more leaves open the possibility that Hogan could also face further investigation.
Hogan’s California-based manager Douglas Urbanski said: “We are unaware of any reopening of any investigation into Mr Hogan. I will mention that after a years long investigation, it was eventually dropped for lack of evidence. Worth mentioning is that Mr Hogan was compensated by the state for a portion of his legal fees in the matter.”
The Australian solicitor who represents all three men, Andrew Robinson, said “Mr Stewart denies and will continue to deny any wrongdoing.”
Mr Robinson added that he had received “no communication from any federal agency” in the seven years since the ACC “took the unprecedented step of issuing a press release advising the public that the investigation” into Hogan and Cornell was over.
The ACIC, which replaced the ACC in 2015, would not make further comment. The DPP and ATO would not comment.
The pursuit of Hogan, Cornell and Stewart began after ACC officers stormed a suite at Melbourne’s Sheraton hotel on Valentine’s Day 2004. The room was booked in the name of Brit Philip Egglishaw, a principal of Swiss tax advisory firm Strachans.
The client files on Egglishaw’s laptop sparked the Project Wickenby tax probe, which cost $430 million to run but claimed to have raised more than $1 billion by the time it finished 2015.
In total 46 people were convicted. Wickenby’s most high-profile scalp was entertainment guru Glenn Wheatley, jailed for 15 months in 2007.
Hogan has said he used Strachans — legitimately.
Egglishaw briefly saw the inside of a cell himself earlier this year when he left his home in Geneva, Switzerland for a visit to Lake Como, Italy. This triggered an Interpol ‘red notice’ for his arrest and he spent two months in a prison at nearby Bassone. Australian authorities wanted Egglishaw extradited but in June a Milan court ruled prosecutors were too slow to lay charges and freed him.
Egglishaw also evaded Hogan’s pursuit of him in 2012.
Hogan’s US lawyer Schuyler Moore brought a court petition in the District Court in California seeking to stop a British Virgin Islands company ultimately owned by Strachans from “absconding” with $US34 million — then worth $A33 million — held in a Swiss bank account.
In launching the action, Moore said there was the potential for “irreparable injury” to Hogan.
But the petition was dismissed. Judge Otis Wright said: “While Petitioner Schuyler Moore recounts a sordid tale of wayward fiduciaries and international fraudsters supposedly absconding with millions of dollars in funds from a Swiss bank account, he skips over one of the most fundamental elements of the American judicial system: personal jurisdiction.
“Moore attempts to reach two foreign defendants, one a British Virgin Islands company and the other (Egglishaw) a British national and Swiss resident, with a petition originally filed in California state court. But given the dearth of connections Respondents have to California, the ‘long arm of the law’ is simply too short to reach them.”
Hogan and Cornell’s earnings from Crocodile I and II have been put at as much as a combined $150 million.