Judge Reduces The Amount Former Governor Tucker Owes Government
By: Import User
Updated: January 7, 2009
A federal judge has cut the amount of back
taxes owed by former Governor Jim Guy Tucker in a Whitewater case.
Tucker had been ordered to pay $1,000,000. But the
amount was cut to $63,000 after prosecutors
acknowledged a different law should have been used to calculate
damages.
Tucker and two co-defendants pleaded guilty to conspiring to
impeding the Internal Revenue Service. Prosecutors say the three
arranged a sham bankruptcy to reduce their tax liability on the
sale of a cable television business in 1988.
At issue was which law should have been used to establish the
amount of taxes owed.
Tucker told The Associated Press that the government`s
acknowledgment that the newer law should be used also meant that
Whitewater prosecutors, either deliberately or accidentally, misled
grand jurors by using the old law when pursuing his indictment in
1995.
Former deputy Whitewater prosecutor W. Hickman Ewing says
documents show an intent to break the law by Tucker.
