Walt Anderson Faces 10 Years in Prison for $210 Million Tax Fraud
FYI,
"US Businessman Faces 10 Years in Prison for $210 Million Tax Fraud"
FinFacts
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10007224.shtml
Walt Anderson speaking at a Space Frontier Foundation Conference in
2003. In 2000, Anderson invested $7 million in a project to turn the
Russian Mir Space Station into a commercial venture.
US telecommunications entrepreneur, Walter Anderson, pleaded guilty to
tax evasion and fraud Friday in relation to what authorities said was
the nation’s largest-ever criminal tax case.
Anderson was indicted in 2005 on charges he evaded $210 million in
federal and local taxes. Prosecutors said Anderson used offshore
corporations and bank accounts to hide income from tax collectors.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of tax evasion and one count of fraud
Friday. He admitted hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in income
from the Internal Revenue Service and from Washington, D.C., tax
collectors during 1998 and 1999.
Under a plea deal with prosecutors, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
Anderson had been charged with evading more than $200m in taxes over
five years and faces up to 80 years in prison if found guilty. He was an
art collector and was alleged to have hidden more than $450m in profits
from federal and local authorities by creating an elaborate network of
offshore investment companies, disguising his ownership of the two
primary companies Gold & Appel and Iceberg Transport and concealing his
US citizenship. It is alleged that Anderson set up accounts at Barclays
Bank in Jersey, falsely stating that he was a citizen of the Dominican
Republic and used private mailing addresses in the Netherlands to evade
tax.
According to the charges against Anderson, he transferred his holdings
in three telecommunications companies Mid-Atlantic Telecom, Esprit
Telecom and Telco Communications to G&A and Iceberg in the early 1990s.
The authorities said that each investment became much more valuable in
the following years, generating enough profit to enable Anderson to
invest in other companies and make a $450m profit for G&A and Iceberg
between 1995 and 1999.
In 1998 Anderson, who lived in Washington D.C., reported a total income
of $67,939 and paid a tax of just $494. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Commissioner Everson said that Anderson actually made at least $126
million that year that he never reported. From 1987 through 1993,
Anderson failed to file a tax return.
Walt Anderson (52) who has been in prison since his arrest in March
2005, was CEO of Orbital Recovery Corp., and had played a major part of
the competitive telecommunications industry which began in the U.S. in
1980 when MCI won a landmark legal decision which allowed it to compete
with AT&T for long distance services. He successfully operated and sold
many telecom operations and has been an investor, advisor, Chairman or
board member for numerous other companies.
Anderson is the founder of Gold & Appel Transfer S.A., a venture capital
and business development company with investment in private and public
companies operating in telecommunication, aerospace and water
transportation business. He was chairman of Satellite Media Services,
which was created by Gold & Appel in 1997 to provide competitive access
to satellite capacity linking most of the world to Europe. Satellite
Media Services created and operates one of the worlds largest IP
satellite networks. He is also a director of MirCorp, which was
originally formed to privatize the MIR space station. MirCorp arranged
for the first space ‘tourist’, Dennis Tito, to visit the International
Space Station (ISS).
--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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