Actor Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) is in Los Angeles federal court trying to block tax authorities in his native Australia from getting his personal and corporate records at three California banks. He sued the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, which, acting for the Aussies, served summonses seeking monthly statements and details on wire transfers and other transactions exceeding $50,000 from 1997 to 2006. Australian press reports have identified Hogan, 68, as a subject of Project Wickenby, a long-running officialrninvestigation of suspected offshore accounts and tax evasion. He has said he paid all taxes owed. In Los Angeles filings Hogan calls himself a U.S. resident two-thirds of the time in question-he now lives in the Santa Barbara area-and says three of the four corporations covered by the summons did no business Down Under. Hogan contends the scrutiny covers years far beyond the Australian statute of limitations and amounts to a "long-distance fishing expedition."
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