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Former United States President Donald Trump’s namesake real estate company was sentenced to pay a $1.61 million criminal penalty charge by a New York judge on Friday after the company was convicted of scheme to defraud tax authorities for 15 years, reported Reuters.
Manhattan criminal court judge, Justice Juan Merchan imposed the sentence, the maximum possible under state law, after jurors found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges last month.
The company’s chief financial officer and Trump family’s aide for a half-century, Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to five months in prison after he testified as the prosecution’s star witness, the report added. No one else was charged.
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One of the defense lawyers, Susan Necheles, said the company plans to appeal while Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the case, is still conducting a criminal probe into Trump’s business practices.
“The sentencing today, along with the sentencing earlier this week, closes this important chapter of our ongoing investigation into the former president and his businesses,” Bragg told reporters. “We will now go on to the next chapter.”
Joshua Steinglass, one of the prosecutors, appeared to lament the size of the punishment, telling Merchan the penalty was only a “tiny portion” of the Trump Organization’s revenue.
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Trump faces another $250 million lawsuit by state Attorney General Letitia James accusing the former president and his children, Donald Jr, Ivanka, and Eric, of inflating his net worth and his company’s asset values to save on loans and insurance.
Experts, however, said that the sentence will not affect companies from committing such crimes.
Bill Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law specializing in white-collar crime, called the penalty a “rounding error” that offers “zero” deterrence.
“This is a farce,” he said. “No one will stop committing these kinds of crimes because of this sentence.”
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