Amber Heard will not face further charges related to bringing her dogs to Australia in 2015.
On Tuesday, Australian authorities announced that the Aquaman actress will not be charged in relation to allegations that she lied about details of how her two Yorkshire terriers were brought into Australia in 2015.
At the time, Heard had brought her dogs Pistol and Boo to the Gold Coast in Australia, where her then-husband Johnny Depp was filming the fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Heard not declaring she was bringing her dogs to the country when she arrived went against Australia’s quarantine regulations.
In July of that year, a spokesman for the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions confirmed to PEOPLE that Heard had been charged with two counts of illegally importing the dogs into the country and one count of producing a false document.
This led to Heard, 37, appearing in Southport Magistrates Court in Australia in 2016 and pleading guilty to providing a false immigration document. Heard was sentenced to a one-month good behavior bond, while the charges of illegally importing the dogs into Australia were dropped, per ABC News.
According to the outlet, Heard’s lawyer denied in 2016 that she had intended to lie when she did not declare her dogs on arrival in Australia. But a statement from former Depp employee, Kevin Murphy, given in court in 2020 when Depp sued The Sun for defamation, claimed that Heard had known about Australia’s quarantine rules and put pressure on a staffer to take responsibility for the rule break.
Amber Heard and Johnny Depp leaving Southport Magistrates Court in 2016.
Robert Shakespeare/Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Heard’s former assistant corroborated those claims in court. The outlet said that the 2020 testimony resulted in an investigation into perjury by the Australian government.
However, according to Australia’s biosecurity watchdog, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, prosecutors have now decided to drop the potential case.
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“Prosecution action will not be taken against actress Amber Heard over allegations related to her sentencing for the illegal import of two dogs into Australia in 2015,” the department said in a statement dated Tuesday.
The department also detailed to the Associated Press that they had worked with agencies abroad to identify whether the actress had provided an untrue testimony and lied when she claimed that she was unaware of the biosecurity laws in Australia.
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“The department collaborated with agencies, both in Australia and overseas, to investigate these claims against Ms Heard,” the department also said in their Tuesday statement. “A brief of evidence was referred to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, who has made the decision not to prosecute in this instance having applied the Prosecution Policy of the Commonwealth.”
PEOPLE has contacted Heard’s agent for comment.
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After the dogs were initially discovered in 2015, Depp and Heard were told they had to obey a “government-imposed 50-hour deadline” to return the dogs to the United States or have them euthanized, per the AP. The couple returned their dogs to the U.S. within the timeframe.
“I am truly sorry that Pistol and Boo were not declared,” Heard said during a video apology she filmed alongside Depp in April 2016.
In January 2017, Heard and Depp’s divorce was finalized after she filed for divorce the previous year, citing irreconcilable differences. The dogs then went under Heard’s ownership.
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