Two of Westmeath’s most famous musicians, Foster and Allen, are to appeal a High Court judgement handed down this week (November 22 ) after the unsuccessfully defended demands from the Revenue Commissioners totalling €6.33 million, despite the judge sympathising with the duo over their being defrauded by disgraced accountant Patrick Russell.
The Commissioners sought judgment for €3.389 million from Tony Allen (59 ), Kileenatoor, Mount Temple, for unpaid income taxes and penalties between 1986 and 1997.
In separate proceedings, Mick Foster (64 ), Walshestown, Mullingar, asked the court to set aside a similar order for €2.947 million obtained by the Revenue in December 2008 over unpaid taxes from 1986 to 2002.
Both of them had tax bills of around €1 million each, with the lion’s share of the two orders made up of penalties and interest charges.
In court this week, both of the musicians challenged the Revenue’s demands, as they both argued these bills had been settled, but their arguments were dismissed by Justice John Hedigan.
Mr Allen said the pair had always paid their taxes on tours and live shows but this issue was about royalties and record sales and had been going on for a few years, and both have admitted they are going to find it very difficult to find such money, but would continue working to do so.
The musical duo said they were victims of a fraud by accountant and barrister Patrick Russell, a former business partner of ex-Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, whom they each paid €50,000 to settle their €175,000 tax liability in 1997.
Russell supplied both with a letter he claimed was from the Revenue Commissioners which said their tax affairs were in order, but this transpired to be a forgery.
Russell, originally of Steelstown, Rathcoole, Co Dublin, but who has had papers filed to him at five different addresses unsuccessfully by the musicians’ legal team, was jailed in the High Court in July 2007 after he had ‘‘thumbed his nose’’ at contractual obligations and orders of the court in conduct described by the judge as “quite disgraceful”.
He was also the subject of a Prime Time exposé and a Mahon Tribunal probe into his business practices.
