It took the jury just over ten hours to determine guilt on the 17 charges filed.
Businesses can’t go to jail. It is one of the advantages of American capitalism, which leaves wide margins to foster the entrepreneurial spirit. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could have filed tax fraud charges against Donald Trump, his sons and other top executives, but instead chose to focus on the company the tycoon founded and another of his companies charged with paying the payrolls That is why yesterday, when a jury delivered a resounding guilty verdict, the tycoon only hurt his pocket and his pride.
The jury did not have much doubt that the Trump Organization has been defrauding the New York government for 15 years, embarking on “a culture of fraud and deception.” It took the twelve members just over ten hours to reach a resounding guilty verdict on the 17 criminal charges filed against both companies, the Trump Organization and the Trump Payroll Corporation, the subsidiary created to pay employees.
One of them sat on the bench. Allen Weisselberg, 75, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, negotiated a reduced sentence of five months in exchange for very limited cooperation with the prosecutor and always without testifying against Donald Trump, who has always been one of his most loyal associates. nor any of his children. “It was my own personal greed that led to this case,” he said, his voice cracking on the bench, in what many understood to be perjury. Weisselberg began working at the organization with the former president’s father, Fred Trump. He handled the personal affairs of the entire family, saw the birth and growth of Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr. and Erick Trump, who considered him “the only person they could trust.” He has been Treasurer of the company, vice president of Trump Hotels & Casinos and even a jury of the reality show that made the tycoon famous, “The Apprentice”. In his statement he was as limited as he could to avoid rotting in jail until the end of his days, but his boss was not so benevolent.
The defense strategy was to consider him “a simple employee” who manipulated the finances for his own benefit to save money on taxes. He did it, not only to save what he has had to repay in excess – the 344,745 million in untaxed expenses, which have become two million dollars when including the fine and interest-, but to save the company large sums prosecutors. The financial strategy was to convert part of the executives’ salaries into tax-free expenses. In other words, they received a good part of their salary in spices. It was not just about having an executive car, but several luxury cars, apartments in Manhattan and even the school of his grandchildren and the university of his children paid directly by Trump’s companies.
“After looking at millions of pages of documents, over many years, against the record numbers of murders and other violent crimes occurring in New York City, the Government managed to get an employee to plead guilty to obtain a greatly reduced sentence,” Trump despised last night in a statement.
The employee in question has continued to collect his salary of $640,000 a year even after taking a leave of absence. In return, he has repeated over and over again that neither Trump nor his children knew anything about the financial tricks with which he saved the company money, something that the jury has not bought. “Nothing happened in the Trump Organization without Donald Trump knowing about it and signing off,” Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen declared in Congress under oath.
The Trump Organization will only pay a fine of 1.6 million dollars, small change for a company that earns hundreds of millions a year, but it will be forever marked by fraud and will not be able to obtain financial loans at the favorable interest that it enjoyed, among other consequences. Additionally, the ruling will strengthen the case of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is conducting a civil investigation and seeking to expel the company from New York. A city that, in any case, the former president considers hostile. “It is very difficult to be a Trump in New York,” he complained last night.
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