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the records he claims she took, even though she appeared as a
witness in this case. Moreover, some of the purportedly stolen
records in fact turned up as part of petitioner’s evidence
intended to document expenditures for yachts built in later
years. That is, although petitioner claimed that the records
substantiating claimed capital improvements to the Sir Winston II
that he made from January 1996 to January 1997 were stolen,
invoices for yacht-related expenditures dated within that period
were offered by him into evidence for other purposes.12
Our conclusion that petitioner did not make the basis-
generating expenditures that he claims is further buttressed by
the fact that, although the unaccounted for expenditures range
from $155,848 in 1994 to $615,119 in 1997, petitioner did not
seek the testimony of, or even identify, a single vendor or
service provider associated with a claimed capital improvement to
any of the vessels at issue. Instead, he merely rested on his
claim that records were stolen and made no effort, through the
time of trial, to reconstruct those records through bank records
or contacts with third-party vendors.
Even if we accepted petitioner’s claim that his records were
stolen, his attempt to estimate the expenditures so that we would
12 The same occurred with respect to purportedly stolen
records substantiating capital improvements to the Sir Winston.
Petitioner offered a yacht-related invoice dated Oct. 24, 1995,
notwithstanding his claim that records covering the period
including this date had been stolen.
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