Trump Organization fined US$1.6 million for tax fraud

NEW YORK (AP):

Donald Trump’s company was fined US$1.6 million Friday for a scheme in which the former president’s top executives dodged personal income taxes on lavish job perks, symbolic, hardly crippling blow for an enterprise boasting billions of dollars in assets.

A fine was the only penalty a judge could impose on the Trump Organization after its conviction last month for 17 tax crimes, including conspiracy and falsifying business records. The amount was the maximum allowed by law. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan gave the company 14 days to pay. A person convicted of the same crimes would’ve faced years in prison.

Trump himself was not on trial and denied any knowledge that a small group of executives were evading taxes on extras including rent-free apartments, luxury cars and private school tuition. Prosecutors said such items were part of what they dubbed the Trump Organization’s “deluxe executive compensation package”.

The company denied wrongdoing and said it would appeal.

“These politically motivated prosecutors will stop at nothing to get President Trump and continue the never-ending witch-hunt which began the day he announced his presidency,” the company said in a statement after the fine was announced.

Neither the former president nor his children, who helped run the Trump Organization, were in the courtroom.

While the fines, less than the cost of a Trump Tower apartment, aren’t big enough to impact the company’s operations or future, the conviction is a black mark on the Republican’s reputation as a savvy businessman as he mounts a campaign to regain the White House.

Outside the courtroom, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, said he wished the law had allowed for a more serious penalty.

“I want to be very clear: we don’t think that is enough,” he said, “Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus systemic and egregious fraud.”

Besides the company, only one executive was charged in the case, former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty last summer to evading taxes on US$1.7 million in compensation. He was sentenced Tuesday to five months in jail.

The criminal case involved financial practices and pay arrangements that the company halted when Trump was elected president in 2016.