PAUL HOGAN has failed to remove the team of people involved in a long criminal investigation of his tax affairs and those of his comic sidekick John "Strop" Cornell and their adviser Tony Stewart.

In the Federal Court yesterday, Justice Arthur Emmett dismissed the Crocodile Dundee star's application to remove from the inquiry an Australian Crime Commission investigator and two officers on secondment to the commission from the Australian Taxation Office.

Hogan's counsel, Francois Kunc, SC, had asked that the trio be "quarantined" from the investigation because they had seen documents seized from the accountancy firm Ernst & Young in late 2005. A small number of the documents were later ruled to be covered by legal professional privilege.

Mr Kunc had conceded that the commission had not acted unlawfully.

But he maintained that the investigators had gained an insight into how Hogan and his associates conducted their business affairs.

In dismissing Hogan's application, Justice Emmett said none of the team had had access to the disputed documents since March 2006 and none of them had any recollection of the contents.

"The advantage that the investigative team gained from access to the disputed documents is ephemeral in the extreme," the judge said.

"While the commission has exercised exorbitant powers conferred by the Commission Act, which overrides the rights of private individuals to privacy in relation to their own affairs, the commission has not exceeded its powers," Justice Emmett said in his judgment.

For four years the commission has been investigating the three as part of Operation Wickenby, a criminal inquiry into money-laundering and tax evasion using overseas accounts.

Ian Andrew, the chief investigator in the matter, earlier told the court it would be almost impossible to pass on the collective knowledge of his team and that the commission would have to "consider the merits of continuing the investigation" in view of the cost associated with getting a new team up to speed.

In an affidavit Mr Andrew said "the subject matter of the investigation is the possible commission of serious criminal offences by Mr Hogan and/or Mr Stewart".

Mr Andrew confirmed that the same team was involved in inquiries into other people, "most noticeably Mr John Cornell and his associates".

The court has heard that the Wickenby inquiry began after the 2004 seizure of a computer belonging to Philip Egglishaw, a principal of Strachans, a Swiss financial services firm that specialises in offshore bank accounts, companies and trusts.

The court has previously heard that Hogan, Cornell and Mr Stewart used Strachans to avoid paying millions of dollars in tax earned from ventures including the Crocodile Dundee movies.

Justice Emmett ordered the commission to pay the entertainer's costs for the proceedings, which began in 2006.

Hogan was ordered to pay the commission's costs for his failed attempt to have the investigators removed from the case.