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| 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.
