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New York prosecutor opens criminal investigation against Trump family companies

2021-05-22T11:26:33.191Z


The former president of the United States could have undervalued some properties of his emporium to partly avoid paying taxes


The investigation of the New York attorney general's office into alleged tax crimes of the Trump Organization, the emporium of former President Donald Trump, has ceased to be a civil case to become a criminal one.

The judicial siege on the former Republican president and the family businesses tightens as the investigations of the prosecutor's office led by Letitia James converge with those undertaken by the Manhattan district attorney's office, Cyrus R. Vance.

Both instances have been investigating Trump's businesses for possible tax and banking crimes for more than a year, but the confirmation, on Tuesday night, that the New York attorney general's office works in conjunction with that of Manhattan represents another step in the pressure on the ex-president, who in February disqualified the judicial action as politically motivated.

Both James and Vance are Democrats.

The New York City Attorney's Office has been investigating possible crimes by Trump's business conglomerate to determine whether it engaged in fraud in the negotiation of loans and tax benefits;

in particular, if the company inflated the value of its properties to obtain advantageous credits while undervaluing its value to benefit from tax reductions.

"We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation is no longer purely civil in nature," Fabien Levy, spokesman for prosecutor James, reported late Tuesday. "We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization on a criminal basis, along with the Manhattan district attorney's office." Prosecutor Vance's office declined to comment on the New York prosecutor's announcement.

The investigations by the Manhattan Prosecutor's Office began following a statement by Michel Cohen, Trump's former lawyer. In a congressional hearing on February 27, 2019, Cohen assured that the then president had inflated the value of several of his properties in his statements to the banks that lent him money, with the intention of obtaining better loans and insurance, at the same time that it underestimated them in its tax returns with the intention of paying less taxes. The New York district attorney's office has focused on two of the Trump family's most iconic properties: the Trump International Tower and Hotel in Chicago and the Trump Building in New York. Both instances have also investigated the records of a farm in the New York county of Wetchester.   

Outside the White House, Trump described in February the investigation into possible personal tax crimes and his emporium as "fascist" and "politically motivated", after the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by his lawyers to avoid the delivery of their tax returns for the last eight years to a New York court. It was precisely the prosecutor Vance's office that obtained the record of those statements, later released by

The New York Times

. Trump then denounced "the greatest political witch hunt in US history."

Vance scored a success when in February he managed to get the Supreme Court to give the green light to his request to examine eight years of tax returns and thousands of financial documents to determine if the former president and his family committed tax fraud and defrauded banks and insurance companies. . In September, a federal judge had to order Trump's son to answer the prosecutor's questions in this case. Eric Trump had refused to do so before the November 3 presidential elections, arguing that his statement could be "used for political purposes."

Although the investigation of alleged fraud being carried out by New York State is the most important, Trump has other judicial fronts open, such as a criminal investigation in Georgia for his attempts to reverse the result of the November elections. On the other hand, James investigates four real estate projects of the Trump Organization and their failed attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills rugby team for alleged falsification of documents, tax fraud or insurance fraud. In this case, the investigations have a civil, not criminal nature, although it is not ruled out that they may lead to the other route if indications arise.

The criminal nature of the new investigation could reduce Donald Trump's chances of being elected candidate of the Republican Party for the next presidential elections in the United States, scheduled for 2024. His ideological ascendancy over the Conservative Party, however, does not decline, as it was He manifested last week, by removing Liz Cheney, who was very critical of the former president, as party leader in the House of Representatives, and replacing her with a faithful ally of his, Elise Stefanik.







More information

  • Trump paid $ 750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017, according to 'The New York Times'



Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-05-22

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