New York City — A Manhattan judge charged the Trump Organization with a “multidimensional scheme” to evade taxes.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has requested a maximum fine of more than $1.6 million.
While the Attorney General, Joshua Stenglass, admitted that the amount represented a fraction of the company’s profits, he described the scheme, which was condemned as “far-reaching and shameless”.
“The sheer scale of this fraud deserves the largest financial penalty the law allows,” Stenglass said. “The defendants have cultivated a culture of fraud.”
This scheme helped former CFO Allen Weisselberg alone evade about $2 million in taxes with his off-the-books compensation in the form of rent, car rentals, and private school tuition payments. Weisselberg paid back his unpaid taxes plus interest and was sentenced this week to five months in prison.
Former President Trump has not been charged, but prosecutors insisted during the trial that he was not “blissfully ignorant” of elements of the scheme.
“A number of these fraudulent practices were expressly punishable from the top down,” Stenglass said during the sentencing hearing.
Judge Juan Merchan imposed the maximum sentence and reprimanded the defense for continuing to blame the company’s accountant for the fraud.
“It’s not what the evidence showed and it’s not what the jury found,” Merchan said. Give the company 14 days to pay.
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