Saban endures grilling by Senate for acceptance of bogus tax shelter.

It was not the kind of setting most billionaires--who tend to be media shy with the glaring exception of The Donald--would ever want to find themselves in.

Hollywood media mogul Haim Saban, who hit it big with the fantasy TV superheroes the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, was grilled by a Senate committee about alleged tax acrobatics.

Saban and Johnson & Johnson heir Robert Wood Johnson, who also owns the New York Jets, were among a group of prominent people to testify last week before a Senate committee investigating the use of off-shore tax shelters.

The testimony came at the close of a year-long government probe into the use of tax shelters by wealthy citizens, who may have ducked hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payments using secretive corporations and trusts on the Isle of Man.

Saban, chairman of Los-Angeles-based Saban Capital Group, was accused of shielding $1.5 billion from capital gains taxes through the use of fake stock deals and false corporations on the Isle of Man, losses allegedly used to offset capital gains.

Both billionaires told the panel that they purchased a tax shelter known as the Personally Optimized Investment Transaction, or POINT, from Seattle-based Quellos Group.

Saban testified that he paid fees of almost $50 million. When presented with the POINT deal in 2001, Saban said be relied on a tax adviser as to its propriety. He also said that despite his business acumen--which landed him on the 11th spot on the Business Journal's list of wealthiest Angelenos this year with an estimated worth of $3.1 billion--he didn't have the knowledge to discern whether the deal was legal.

"My formal education ended when I left high school," Saban said. "If I were a professor, I don't think I could get my arms around this.

"I just said ... is it kosher and can we get a reputable firm to say so?" Saban added.

Saban said he is making arrangements with the IRS to pay back taxes, and Johnson said he has settled with the IRS.