(New York) Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion, was sentenced in New York on Tuesday to five months in prison and fined more than $2 million, a announced the Manhattan district attorney.
Mr. Weisselberg, very close to Donald Trump, had pleaded guilty to 15 counts of fraud and tax evasion involving $ 1.76 million in undeclared income between 2005 and 2021, as part of a vast financial fraud case in which the Trump Organization was also found guilty on December 6, a criminal first for this group.
“In Manhattan, you have to play by the rules, whoever you are and whoever you work for,” New York State Attorney for the District of Manhattan Alvin Bragg thundered in a statement. announcing a five-month prison sentence and more than $2 million in back taxes, fines and interest owed to New York State and New York City tax authorities.
“The Trump Organization’s CFO Allen Weisselberg used his position to secure lavish perks such as a free rental of a luxury Manhattan apartment, a number of Mercedes-Benz cars, and tuition in private schools for his grandchildren, all without paying the required taxes, ”denounced the prosecutor, an elected Democrat.
“Weisselberg will serve his prison sentence for his crimes,” added Mr. Bragg, while American media claimed that the former financial director would spend the next few months in Rikers Island prison in New York.
The case concerns a system of false accounting declarations to hide for years (from 2005 to 2018) from the tax services financial compensation in kind from certain senior executives, in particular Allen Weisselberg, who had testified at the trial of the Trump Organization in last November after pleading guilty in August.