Hogan fights release of tax records
Australian actor Paul Hogan will go to the High Court to prevent the public release of documents relating to multi-million dollar tax fraud allegations against him.
The Crocodile Dundee star, who lives in California, has challenged a Federal Court judge's 2008 ruling that would have allowed the documents to be released.
The material had been put together by the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) as part of its special tax fraud investigation known as Operation Wickenby.
The ACC was investigating claims the movie star channelled millions of dollars into offshore tax havens.
In a majority decision on Friday, a full court of the Federal Court dismissed Hogan's challenge to the lifting of the ban.
His lawyers immediately indicated they intended to take the challenge to the High Court, and therefore the documents were not released.
In the Federal Court today, counsel for News Limited and Fairfax, Tamir Maltz, said Hogan's interests had been "indulged" for some time and because there was little chance the High Court would uphold the ban the dossier should be released.
"Special leave (to continue the ban) will never be granted in this case because it's the most undeserving case that one can imagine," he told Justice Michael Moore.
However, Hogan's barrister Francois Kunc SC argued that delaying the release of the documents for as long as the High Court process took would not "diminish" the public interest in them, while taking the step to release them could not be undone.
"Pandora's box will have been opened and no one will be able to get Pandora back in," he said.
Justice Moore agreed with Mr Kunc that there was at least "not insubstantial" reasons to think the High Court would side with Hogan, given that one out of the three federal judges behind last Friday's decision had been persuaded.
However, he ordered that Mr Kunc had 21 days to request the matter to be expedited in the High Court.
