Australian actor Paul Hogan has been cleared to return home to the United States after he was barred last month from leaving Australia because of a disputed tax bill, his lawyer said today.
The 70-year-old star of the Crocodile Dundee movie trilogy, who lives in Los Angeles, arrived in Sydney on August 20th to attend his mother's funeral and was served with an Australian Taxation Office order barring him from leaving Australia until he settled a multimillion-dollar tax bill, lawyer Andrew Robinson said last week.
Mr Robinson said after a “cordial and co-operative” meeting between Hogan’s lawyers and tax officials, an agreement was reached that will allow Hogan to return to the United States.
“While the commissioner and Mr Hogan remain in dispute on more general taxation issues, Mr Hogan continues to protest his innocence and denies any wrongdoing,” Mr Robinson said in a statement.
The tax office refuses to comment due to a policy of not discussing individual cases.
Australian tax and crime investigators have fought Hogan in a five-year legal battle in Australian and US courts to investigate evidence he used offshore bank accounts to conceal earnings after Crocodile Dundee became an international hit in 1986.
Hogan has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with tax evasion.
In an interview with Australian TV, Hogan said he couldn’t disclose the exact bill for legal reasons, but said he was unable to afford even 10 per cent of it.
“I actually came out here at the request of the Australian Crime Commission at my own time and expense to assist them with their inquiries,” he said in the interview. “If I was a tax evader, which I’m not, I must be the dumbest one in the world, because they gave me five years' notice that they have seized every piece of paper that my tax advisers and lawyers and accountants have ever had. I kept coming back here.”
Hogan lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Crocodile Dundee co-star Linda Kozlowski, and their 12-year-old son Chance.
The actor shot to fame in the US after he appeared in an Australian tourism TV ad in the mid 1980s, in which he cheerfully offered to “slip an extra shrimp on the barbie”.
AP