Dutch tax adviser to pay $15.5 mil. for helping DJ Tiësto avoid U.S. taxes, court rules
Dutch tax adviser Frank Butselaar must pay 15.5 million dollars to the American government in compensation for the taxes Thijs Verwest, better known as DJ Tiësto, avoided paying with his help, a court in the New York city of White Plains ruled on Thursday, Financieele Dagblad reported. The court previously sentenced Butselaar to 30 months in prison for tax fraud by helping celebrities funnel their money to tax havens.
Butselaar was one of the best-known tax advisors in the Netherlands, often referred to as the “tax advisor of the stars.” Two years ago, he was arrested in Italy and extradited to the United States on suspicion of helping various celebrities siphon off income from the American tax authorities.
In November, he pleaded guilty to setting up a fraudulent construction for one of those clients. According to FD, that client was DJ Tiësto. The court sentenced him to 2.5 years in prison in February, with the judge calling the fraud “gigantic.” According to NOS, the Dutch tax advisor could have faced 20 years in prison, but a procedural error by the prosecutors resulted in this much milder sentence.
The court in White Plains now ruled on the amount of compensation Bustelaar had to pay, concluding the criminal case against the 65-year-old man. According to FD, Butselaar’s lawyers and the public prosecutors interpreted the settlement agreement concluded in November differently, which is why the amount of compensation for income lost by the U.S. as a result of the tax construction could not be determined during the earlier hearing.
When Butselaar was sentenced in February, he had already spent 21 months in custody, first in Italy and then the United States. That left him with nine months to spend in an American prison. “Although this is not what we had hoped for, we are happy to know that it is a matter of months before Frank Butselaar can go home again,” his lawyers told FD at the time.
