Donald Trump’s Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million by the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan for felony tax fraud and other charges on Friday. It’s the maximum penalty under the law, which the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, would like to see be raised to avoid similar “brazen” behavior, The New York Times reports.
The Trump Organization was convicted in December of off-the-books compensation to its top executives such as luxury cars and private school tuition. The organization’s CFO Allen H. Weisselberg, who was behind the scheme, was sentenced Tuesday to five months at Rikers Island after pleading guilty and testifying in the trial.
Lawyers for the organization had tried to shift the blame to Weisselberg and to an outside accounting firm, Mazars USA. But Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A’s office, successfully argued that the company was involved in “a multidimensional scheme to defraud the tax authorities.”
“To avoid detection, they simply falsified the records,” Steinglass said. “This conduct can only be described as egregious.”
“I want to be very clear, we don’t think [the $1.6 million] is enough,” Bragg, who is still investigating the former president, told reporters after Friday’s sentencing, Politico reports.
“Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus systemic and egregious fraud,” Bragg added. “Nonetheless, this historic sentencing serves, or should serve, as a reminder to all in New York, both companies in their corporate form and their executives, that this type of conduct in New York will not be tolerated and will be held accountable.”
Bragg told the Times that the lack of a higher financial penalty “allows a corporation, if it wanted to be brazen, to price this kind of behavior in… The direct consequence needs to be stiffer.”
Judge Juan Merchan ordered the company to pay the fine within 14 days.
Trump, who was not on trial and did not appear in court, has denied any knowledge of financial wrongdoing. In a statement released after sentencing, the Trump Organization said, “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.”
Attorney Susan Necheles, who represented the Trump Organization, said in court that the company plans to appeal the verdict.
