Billionaire Must Stand Trial In Tax-Evasion Case
The judge overseeing the case against Robert Brockman – an American billionaire accused of allegedly “using a Bermuda-based family charitable trust and other offshore entities to hide assets from the Internal Revenue Service while failing to pay taxes” – has rejected his claims that dementia leaves him incompetent to stand trial.
The Bloomberg website said, “The judge overseeing billionaire Robert Brockman’s tax evasion case, the largest against an individual in US history, rejected his claims that dementia leaves him incompetent to stand trial.
“US District Judge George C. Hanks Jr.’s decision means Brockman, 80, must defend a 39-count indictment accusing him of evading taxes on $2 billion of income and other crimes. Brockman’s lawyers argued his progressive dementia, caused by Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, has accelerated recently. If his condition worsens, they could file a new incompetency claim.
“The court finds that despite Brockman’s recent health problems, the government has met its burden of establishing that Brockman is competent to stand trial,” Hanks ruled Monday in federal court in Houston.
Testing shows Brockman is “exaggerating his symptoms of severe dementia and his cognitive abilities are not as poor as reflected by his cognitive test results,” the judge wrote. “In other words, Brockman is malingering to avoid prosecution.”
“The judge agreed with prosecutors who claimed that while Brockman has some cognitive impairment, he has exaggerated his decline since 2018 as US investigators focused on whether he controlled billions of dollars in a Bermuda charitable trust. They said Brockman functioned at a high level even after his October 2020 indictment. Brockman later stepped down as chief executive of Reynolds & Reynolds, a software company.
You can read the full story here on Bloomberg.
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