No Deal Made to Free Actor in Tax Case, Prosecutors Say

New York Times | November 7, 2006
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Wesley Snipes, who often portrays law enforcement agents in movies, remains a federal fugitive, and no deal has been made to drop the tax fraud and conspiracy charges against him, a spokesman for Paul I. Perez, the United States attorney in central Florida, said yesterday.

Mr. Snipes, 44, was charged in an indictment handed up last month. He is in Namibia filming “Gallowwalker,” a horror movie, for Hannibal Pictures and Double Edge Entertainment, two independent filmmakers in Southern California.

The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Namibia. The country’s laws, however, allow foreign governments to apply to have criminal suspects extradited, the State Department said. The government is negotiating with Mr. Snipes, said Steve Cole, the spokesman for Mr. Perez.

Variety, the Hollywood trade publication, reported last Thursday that “Snipes will not be jailed and will be allowed both to continue working and to travel abroad.” Variety, whose article was cited around the world, said Mr. Snipes had agreed to an installment plan to pay about $13 million in taxes cited in the indictment.

Patrick Frater, who wrote the article, said yesterday that he spoke to three associates of Mr. Snipes, but made no attempt to check with prosecutors about what they had said. Any blame for inaccuracy, he added, should rest on Variety editors “who put it through” into print.

Calls to Peter Bart, the editor of Variety, and Richard Rionda Del Castro, chairman and chief executive of Hannibal Pictures, were not returned.

An associate of Mr. Snipes who was also indicted, Eddie Ray Kahn, the founder of American Rights Litigators and its successor, Guiding Light of God Ministries, was scheduled to appear yesterday at a court hearing in Tampa. Mr. Kahn, who was arrested in Panama last week and extradited, promotes the argument that most Americans do not owe taxes but are tricked by the government into paying.

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