Crocodile Dundee is missing $34m. Aussie actor Paul Hogan, who played the plain-speaking, weathered Dundee in the 1986 film of the same name, has launched a lawsuit to retrieve money he alleges was stolen from him.
The 73-year-old actor has brought a lawsuit in a US court as he attempts to recover $34 million held in a Swiss bank account. Reports on Monday said the Australian star is pursuing his former tax adviser for the cash.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports there is already an international warrant out for financial adviser Philip Egglishaw, the man otherwise known as the “bowler hat Englishman.”
Hogan’s advisers in the US accuse Egglishaw, who set up complex corporate structures in tax havens to help clients evade tax, of stealing Hogan’s money.
Swiss newspaper Le Matin Dimanche has said account number 379865 at the Corner Bank in Lausanne, also known as “The Carthage Trust,” contains $34 million of Hogan’s money. Hogan, however, cannot access the cash.
Hogan’s lawyers say Egglishaw has either ”absconded” with Crocodile Dundee’s missing $34m or simply spent it all.
Representing Hogan, US lawyer Schuyler Moore emailed Egglishaw’s lawyer in Geneva, Paul Gully-Hart with the following:
“The actions of Egglishaw have now crossed the boundary of legality, and he is now engaging in criminal fraud, theft, and breach of fiduciary duty, and you are now directly aiding and abetting his criminal actions. The Carthage Trust’s beneficiary [Hogan] is not going to stand idly by in the face of this theft, and he is going to take every step possible in every country possible to hold Egglishaw, Strachans, you, and your firm liable and brought to account.”
For the past year, no bank statements or accounts relating to the millions in the Carthage Trust have been forthcoming from Egglishaw.
Worse still for Hogan, the other signatory to the Carthage Trust account is in jail in Australia. Philip de Figueiredo is serving a two-and-a-half year sentence after being found guilty of conspiring to defraud the Australian government of more than $4 million in tax. De Figueiredo was formerly Egglishaw’s business partner.
Do you think Crocodile Dundee’s missing $34m will show up again, or is Hogan set to lose out?