WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) -- Wesley Snipes will continue filming as planned in Namibia despite the U.S. warrant for his arrest on tax fraud charges, the producer of "Gallowwalker" said Monday.
Joanne Reay said Snipes, who is the lead actor in the movie, was on location in the desert near the town of Swakob. Reay said Snipes had traveled to Namibia to shoot the film and not to flee U.S. justice. She said the plan was to stay until the third week in December.
"As far as we understand, Wesley is not going to be arrested in Namibia," she told The Associated Press.
"We are shooting and we are continuing to shoot," said Reay. "We are aware of the issue around the tax charges but we are not discussing it."
Snipes, 44, was indicted last week on eight counts of tax fraud, accused of trying to cheat the government out of nearly $12 million in false refund claims and not filing returns for six years. If convicted of all the charges, he could face 16 years in prison.
At the time, prosecutors said they couldn't arrest Snipes because they didn't know where he was.
Reay said Snipes wasn't staying at the luxury lodge near Swakob where Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt awaited the birth of their daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, earlier this year.
According to the indictment, Snipes had his taxes prepared by accountants with a history of filing false returns to reap payments for their clients. The firm, American Rights Litigators, would receive 20 percent of refunds from clients, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said Snipes fraudulently claimed refunds totaling nearly $12 million in 1996 and 1997 on income taxes already paid.
The star of the "Blade" trilogy, "Jungle Fever" and "White Men Can't Jump" was also charged with failure to file returns from 1999 through 2004.
Wait a minute! If the accountants' filed false returns, then how is he' going to go to jail? The accountants are liable for the $12 mil and filing falsly! Hey, white men may not be able to jump, and black men may not be able to hide, but accounts? They can't do math!
Posted by 4949:
Wait a minute! If the accountants' filed false returns, then how is he' going to go to jail? The accountants are liable for the $12 mil and filing falsly! Hey, white men may not be able to jump, and black men may not be able to hide, but accounts? They can't do math!
I don't know why the poster made a racial type overture in his heading, but the government DOES NOT care if YOUR accountant fcked up with YOUR money. ALL they care about is getting money owed to them. While the accountant may have commited a crime, Mr Snipes is up shts creek without a paddle here. He has to come up with the money for the government and go after the accoutant seperately. This also happened to Scottie Pippen. When you have tremendous resources coming in, people tend to live up to their short term cash flow--often disregaring the long term AND sometimes getting rather poor advice or getting hooked up with unscrupulous money managers.
Good points. I will also say, the more money you make, ultimately the more problems you will have because of the people you mentioned. It can be just too big sometimes for one person to watch they're money all of the time. I'm not a black person, but I believe in justice and I believe if your going to catch someone doing something wrong, then catch them red handed. Don't try to sensationalize it, because it creates doubt and loses trust.
