Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, was fined up to $1.6 million in New York on Friday for financial and tax fraud, the Manhattan prosecutor said in a statement. .
• Read also: A crazy week in the United States Congress
The group of the American billionaire, candidate for the nomination of the Republican Party for the presidential election of 2024, was tried for tax evasion and falsification of accounting declarations, in particular with the aim of hiding financial compensation from certain senior leaders from the tax services.
This is a criminal first for the group of the former American president (2017-2021), which brings together golf clubs, luxury hotels and real estate properties. The Trump Organization is awaiting an even larger civil trial in 2023 in a different financial fraud case.
“Today, former President Trump’s businesses were fined the maximum fines allowed by law after historic convictions for a total of 17 misdemeanor felonies,” prosecutor Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
Specifically, two companies in the group, the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation, were accused of having granted financial or in-kind benefits to senior executives, concealing them from the tax authorities to avoid paying taxes, from 2005 to 2018.
Among them, a former historic financial director of the company, Allen Weisselberg, long very close to Donald Trump, who pleaded guilty to fifteen counts and was sentenced Tuesday in the same case to five months in prison and more than two million dollar fine.
At the announcement of his sentence, Mr. Weisselberg, 75, who had started working in 1973 as an accountant for the father of Donald Trump, left handcuffed in the direction of the prison of Rikers Island to serve his sentence.