Professor Graham Kelly, the founder of the biotech company Novogen, and a distiguished figure in the Australian scientific community, has been prosecuted for tax evasion by the Australian Tax Office. Professor Kelly used a network of offshore companies to fund the purchase of a A$1.5 million ($1.28 million) house in 2003, documents tendered to the Federal Court as part of the Operation Wickenby tax investigation suggest. Operation Wickenby is a wide ranging Tax Office sweep of top figures in Australian public life. The Tax Office lodged the documents to justify freezing A$1.6 million in proceeds from the sale of the property earlier this year after a London company laid claim to the money as the lender. But the Tax Office has now alleged the lender, Pall Mall, is part of Professor Kelly's network of offshore companies. The ATO has detailing a string of vehicles and transactions in the British Virgin Isles, the UK, and Swiss financiers who pulled off the transaction. "Pall Mall was part of a scheme, the object of which was to disguise the fact that Professor Kelly provided the funds to purchase the property," the Tax Office said. Two companies allegedly linked to Professor Kelly in the transaction appear central to the case - a British Virgin Islands company, Leominister, and a local company, Bende Holdings. The Tax Office has detailed the sale of seven million Novogen options to Leominister by Bende. Professor Kelly used Bende Holdings to pay the deposit on the purchase of the Peel Street property in July 2003, it is claimed. Justice James Allsop rejected an application by Kelly's lawyers to make that statement confidential, saying while the allegations were general, they may yet arise in relation to Professor Kelly. The Tax Office issued Professor Kelly with revised tax assessments for the years 1999-2005 on 3 July this year, just days before it applied to the Federal Court to have the $1.6 million frozen. The Tax Office is working with the Australian Crime Commission as part of a tax fraud and money laundering investigation. Professor Kelly is now believed to be living in the US.