NEW YORK — Prosecutors charged former president Donald Trump’s business with a 15-year “scheme to defraud” the government and charged its chief financial officer with grand larceny and tax fraud in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, describing what they said was a wide-ranging effort to hide income from tax authorities.
In charging papers, prosecutors alleged that the Trump Organization effectively kept two sets of books. In one — for internal use — it carefully tallied the value of benefits given to executives as part of their compensation: apartments, cars, furniture, tuition payments, even money for holiday gifts.
But in the documents that the Trump Organization sent to tax authorities, prosecutors said, those benefits were omitted. Prosecutors said the result was that the Trump Organization and its executives avoided taxes on their full compensation: CFO Allen Weisselberg, they said, avoided paying more than $900,000. Continue reading.