Amber Heard's Australia Investigation May Receive FBI Attention

As the Australian government continues its investigation of perjury allegations against actress Amber Heard, the FBI is reportedly assisting in the probe.

Heard, 36, is being investigated by Australia's Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) over allegations that she lied under oath after bringing her pet dogs into the country in May 2015.

Following a March 2015 incident in Australia with her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, in which the pair got into an argument and Depp's finger was severed, Heard brought their two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, into the country. She reportedly checked "no" to the question on her immigration card asking about importing anything into the country that needed to be declared.

Because of Australia's strict quarantine laws, foreign pets must be quarantined for 10 days when first brought into the country. Government officials asked Heard at the time to remove the dogs from Australia or have them euthanized. Depp had flown the dogs back to the United States, and in July 2015 Heard was charged with illegally importing them to Australia.

In 2016, Heard entered a court battle with local authorities, and the Aquaman actress pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of falsifying documents, avoiding conviction. The couple, who divorced later that year, posted an apology video. In it, Heard said that she had assumed her husband's assistants had arranged the terriers' passage into the country and that her sleep deprivation and jet lag caused the blunder.

Amid the couple's six-week-long defamation lawsuit last month, a DAWE representative told Newsweek in an earlier report that the department was continuing to look into "allegations of perjury by Ms. Heard during court proceedings for the 2015 illegal importation of [her] two dogs into Australia."

The FBI has yet to confirm it is helping the Australian authorities with the investigation. Retired FBI agent and attorney Bobby Chacon told the Law & Crime website—which reported the assistance, citing a source familiar with the matter—that an FBI agent's involvement would not be unusual.

"The FBI maintains an office in Canberra, and there are FBI agents permanently assigned to Australia [on a rotating basis]," Chacon told Law & Crime. "Part of their mission is liaison and assistance, so if the Australians needed something from here in the U.S. they would certainly contact the FBI's Australia office and the FBI would likely assist."

An attorney for Heard told E! News in 2021 after the announcement of the investigation, "It is truly inconceivable, and we are confident it is not true, that either the Australian government or the FBI would embrace a policy of further pursuing and victimizing a person who has already been adjudicated to be the victim of domestic violence."

Newsweek reached out to the FBI and a spokesperson for Heard for comment.