Wesley Snipes: Criminal Fugitive?
by Jeff Davis
Well, looks like we won’t get to see a low-speed chase with black actor Wesley Snipes crouching down in the backseat of a white Bronco (just like OJ Simpson twelve years ago). Snipes has decided that, in view of his recent indictment by the IRS and Justice Department for massive tax fraud, now is a good time for him to re-discover his African roots.
A Reuters article reports that Snipes is now “Filming a movie in the African country of Namibia which has no extradition treaty with Washington. ‘It is confirmed. He is definitely here,’ Edwin Kanguatjivi, chief executive officer of the Namibia Film Commission, said by telephone. ‘He has been in Namibia since the end of August.’” (In other words, somebody tipped Snipes off to the pending indictment.) “U.S. officials in Tampa, Florida, issued a warrant for Snipes’ arrest on an indictment that alleges the 44-year-old actor illegally claimed tax refunds of almost $12 million. Snipes…could face 16 years in prison if convicted on all charges.”
Snipes didn’t file any tax returns at all for six years. Added to that it seems he was illegally refunded $12 million dollars on his 1997 return thanks to some creative accounting. Why would Snipes then hang out a red flag for the IRS by not filing returns for six years is something of a mystery. Clearly Mr. Snipes is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.
What’s interesting is that Namibia, formerly the German colony of South-West Africa, is becoming something of a haven for American celebrities and fugitives. Last month Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, the former chief and founder of Comverse Technology Inc who is wanted in the United States on charges of manipulating stock options, was discovered living in a heavily-guarded private mansion in the black-ruled country, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. Celeb-watchers will also remember that Namibia is where Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt fled from the paparazzi to have their love child, in a luxury estate by Walvis Bay. (A former German colony, once the jewel in the Kaiser’s imperial crown, seems to have lot of luxury estates left over from the old days which reclusive American celebrity fugitives can acquire at knock-down prices.) Jolie and Pitt virtually rented the entire country for their birth event, including the government and the police, who obligingly loaded a number of intrusive paparazzi and media reporters onto planes and deported them so Angelina could drop her little bastard in peace.
Will Wesley Snipes now take up residence in one of those old leftover colonial mansions in Windhoek or Luderitz or Walvis Bay? That twelve million he stole from Uncle Sam should go a long way towards greasing the skids for him in a poor country like Namibia, and if that doesn’t work, Snipes can always holler racism and turn himself into the victim, in best Jesse Jackson tradition. Most likely he’ll wait for the next Democrat president and buy a presidential pardon for his tax cheating much like Mr. Mark Rich did with Bill Clinton.