Kevin Costner is firing back at a blockbuster claim at the heart of a new lawsuit alleging he stashed millions of dollars in a secret Swiss bank account in order to evade taxes.
In court documents obtained by The Blast, Costner’s attorneys are insisting the lawsuit, filed by whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld, be dismissed.
According to The Blast, Birkenfeld has helped recover billions of dollars for the U.S. government from attempted tax evaders, and is claiming that Costner derailed his tell-all book over the book’s allegations that Costner and billionaire Leonard Lauder each have secret Swiss bank accounts holding millions.
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Costner, however, is denying the claims, with his lawyers describing Birkenfeld as a “convicted felon who admitted conspiring to defraud the U.S. government out of taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars, who admitted smuggling diamonds into the country in a toothpaste tube, and who served time in federal prison.”
Costner’s court filing adds: “In an apparent gambit to raise his own profile and continue to seek his ’15 minutes of fame,’ Birkenfeld has repeatedly spread outrageous malicious lies claiming that Defendant Kevin M. Costner supposedly hid millions of dollars in a secret UBS Swiss bank account to evade U.S. taxes. Birkenfeld has done so despite the fact that Mr. Costner never had any UBS Swiss account or any offshore accounts whatsoever.”
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In addition, Costner insists that there’s not even any need to “delve into the provably false allegation” against him, and is demanding the case be tossed out for being filed in the wrong state.
