The Crocodile Dundee star was accused of using offshore bank accounts to conceal his earnings, but a long criminal investigation into his financial dealings was dropped this week (beg22Nov10).
Hogan’s lawyer admits the actor is “relieved” he has been cleared, and is now weighing up his options about recouping the money he spent attempting to protect his reputation during the case.
His attorney, Andrew Robinson, tells the AAP, “This has generated more than a million press articles here and overseas. It’s been front page in Ecuador, Romania, Ireland, all sorts of extraordinary places, and the difficulty is that when these reports were made they tended to refer to (Hogan and his business partner, John Cornell) as the Australian tax cheats.
“That’s the trashing of a reputation that is going to be hard to get back… Paul’s initial reaction is that he wants to talk to people about what they are going to do about the millions of dollars he spent defending his name… Given these proceedings were dropped in the way they were, I think he will be instructing us about the possibility of making some submission in regard to compensation.”
Australian Taxation Office (ATO) officials are still pursuing the 70 year old for the reported $32.1 million (£21.4 million) tax bill he allegedly still owes. Hogan admitted in August (10) that he couldn’t afford to pay even 10 per cent of that sum.
