The billionaire facing the largest U.S. tax-evasion case against an individual slammed the Internal Revenue Service for emptying his wife’s bank account as it seeks to collect $1.45 billion from him.
Robert Brockman claimed in a Houston federal court filing that the IRS seized the money Monday and shunned an offer by his family’s Bermuda trust to set aside $1.45 billion while he contests the agency’s civil claims. The seizure occurred the same day U.S. lawyers urged a judge to reject the trust’s proposal to relax liens on Brockman’s property and assets, the filing says.
“It is unfathomable that the government may turn away from a proposal that would make full collection of its asserted tax liability possible, while the IRS instead continues in its efforts to grab far lesser amounts from Mr. Brockman, his wife, and other third parties,” Brockman’s lawyers wrote Wednesday.
Brockman, the former CEO and owner of retail technology giant Reynolds & Reynolds, wants a judge to lift the IRS’s so-called jeopardy assessment, which allows immediate collection when taxpayers are “designing quickly” to move assets beyond the government’s reach. The government said in its filing that its jeopardy assessment shouldn’t be lifted based on a letter from the Bermuda trust.