Writing on the band's official blog, Simon Le Bon laid the group's US hip-hop crush to bed.
"These incredibly violent experiments are entirely indefensible, given their cruelty, inapplicability to humans and the superior non-animal research methods that are available," said Justin Goodman, the animal rights group's US director of laboratory investigations.
The drop includes one-off costs of £18.8m, relating mainly to the cost of writing off CDP 570 and of cutting about 200 jobs, primarily among the group's US sales force.
In response, Icap explained that the loans had just recently been repaid in full by the group's US operations, and that a process to wind down its Luxembourg unit had begun only last month.
"I was stunned and I was wondering if it was a practical joke because it was too good to be true," said Margaret Williams, director of the World Wildlife Fund conservation group's US Arctic program.
These intellectual property rights ultimately reside in US-based Amazon companies, US tax officials claim, and the group has been under-charging AEHT in a way that has unfairly lowered the group's US tax bill.
