The judge also banned the former president and Republican presidential candidate from conducting business in New York for three years.
Donald Trump was fined $354 million by a New York court for massively falsifying the value of his real estate in order to obtain cheap loans from banks and interest rates from insurance companies.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who has been leading the New York State civil lawsuit against the Trump Organization for several months, added to this significant fine the ban on Donald Trump from exercising the functions of manager or director of a company based in New York for three years . His two adult sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Junior, executive vice presidents of the company, were each fined more than $4 million and barred from running companies. Resident of New York for two years. However, he didn't go as far as ordering the dissolution of the Trump Organization as he could have. A court-appointed administrator must oversee the company's activities during the three-year suspension.
Donald Trump assured on Friday that he would appeal his conviction. “There was no fraud” and it was “instrumentalization against a political opponent,” he assured the press from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
In his ruling, Judge Engoron held that the defendants, Trump and his two sons, were “in denial of reality” and “pathologically” unable to acknowledge their actions. “Their complete lack of remorse and remorse borders on pathology,” he writes, “the defendant committed neither murder nor arson.” They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. However, the defendants are unable to admit their guilt.” “The frauds are obvious and shock the conscience,” the judge added.
Value manipulation
The decision directly impacts the image of a wealthy and shrewd businessman on which Trump built his reputation, in the same city of New York where he began his career as a real estate agent. The 92-page document details how Trump systematically manipulated the value of some of his most prominent properties, such as his Trump Tower triplex on 5th Avenue, the luxury Seven Springs estate and his 80-acre property north of New York. the Mar-a-Lago Palace in Palm Beach, Florida, or his golf club in Aberdeen, Scotland.
According to the document, Trump and his company routinely and intentionally fraudulently estimated the value of these properties in order to obtain cheap loans from banks such as Deutsche Bank, one of the main institutions that lent money to Trump. According to Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer who testified at the trial, Trump never directly asked his advisers to overvalue his properties. “He talks like a mafia boss and says what he wants without being specific. For example, when he said, “I'm worth more than five billion, maybe six, seven or eight,” we understood what he meant.
After the trial of this civil trial without a jury, Judge Engoron alone decided the verdict and sanctions, which amount to the $370 million requested by New York prosecutor Laetitia James. Today the Court ignored the law and the facts and simply approved the Attorney General's patently unfair political crusade against the most prominent candidate for President of the United States. », commented Trump's lawyer in a press release. He called the decision a “tyrannical abuse of power” and said his client would appeal the ruling.
Trump, whose appearances at the trial have been turbulent, called the verdict a “hoax.” In a statement, he attacked Democratic prosecutor Letitia James as “racist and corrupt,” “the corrupt Judge Engoron” and “an unlawful and anti-American verdict against me, my family and my incredible company.” “There were no casualties, no damage, no complaints. “There were only happy banks and insurance companies,” said Trump.