Judge sentences Trump Organisation to pay US$1.61m penalty for tax fraud
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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, is still conducting a criminal probe into Mr Donald Trump’s business practices.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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NEW YORK - A New York judge on Friday ordered Mr Donald Trump’s namesake real estate company to pay a US$1.61 million (S$2 million) criminal penalty after it was convicted of scheming to defraud the tax authorities for 15 years.
Justice Juan Merchan of the Manhattan criminal court imposed the sentence, the maximum possible under state law, after jurors found two Trump Organisation affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges in December.
On Tuesday, Justice Merchan sentenced Allen Weisselberg, who worked for Mr Trump’s family for half a century and was the company’s former chief financial officer, to five months in prison after he testified as the prosecution’s star witness.
Ms Susan Necheles, one of the defence lawyers, said Mr Trump’s company plans to appeal. No one else was charged.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the case, is still conducting a criminal probe into Mr Trump’s business practices.
“The sentencing today, along with the sentencing earlier this week, closes this important chapter of our ongoing investigation into the former president and his businesses,” Mr Bragg said on Friday. “We now will go on to the next chapter.”
Mr Joshua Steinglass, one of the prosecutors, appeared to lament the size of the punishment, telling Justice Merchan the penalty was only a “tiny portion” of the Trump Organisation’s revenue.
‘Rounding error’
Professor Bill Black of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, who specialises in white-collar crime, called the penalty a “rounding error” that offers “zero” deterrence.
“This is a farce,” he said. “No one will stop committing these kinds of crimes because of this sentence.”
The case has long been a thorn in the side of the Republican former president, who calls it part of a witch hunt by Democrats who dislike him and his politics.
Mr Trump also faces a US$250 million civil lawsuit by state Attorney-General Letitia James accusing him and his adult children Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric of inflating his net worth and his company’s asset values to save on loans and insurance.
Ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in jail, after he testified as the prosecution’s star witness.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mr Bragg and Ms James are Democrats, as is Mr Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance, who brought the criminal case. Mr Trump is seeking the presidency in 2024, after losing his re-election bid in 2020.
Fraud ‘sanctioned from the top down’
At a four-week trial, prosecutors offered evidence that Mr Trump’s company covered personal expenses such as rent and car leases for executives without reporting them as income, and pretended that Christmas bonuses were non-employee compensation.
Mr Trump himself signed bonus cheques, prosecutors said, as well as the lease on Weisselberg’s luxury Manhattan apartment and private school tuition for the latter’s grandchildren.
“A number of these fraudulent practices were explicitly sanctioned from the top down,” Mr Steinglass said at Friday’s hearing.
Attorney Nicholas Gravante (second from left), who represented ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg, is followed by protesters, after Weisselberg’s sentencing in New York.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Despite testifying for the government, Weisselberg said Mr Trump was not part of the fraud scheme, and refused to help Mr Bragg in his broader investigation into the former president.
The Trump Organisation had put Weisselberg on paid leave until they severed ties this past week. His lawyer said the split, announced on Tuesday, was amicable.
Weisselberg, 75, is serving his sentence in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail.
Mr Trump faces several other legal woes, including probes related to the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
Separately, a US judge on Friday rejected as “absurd” Mr Trump’s effort to dismiss writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing him of defamation and battery after he denied raping her in the mid-1990s.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said there was no merit to Mr Trump’s argument that Ms Carroll’s battery claim under New York’s Adult Survivors Act must be dismissed because the law denied him due process under the state’s Constitution.
REUTERS
