Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[scion]

Read: Indictment charges against Trump Organization and its CFO

By CNN
Updated 1855 GMT (0255 HKT) July 1, 2021

(CNN)Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg is appearing in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday afternoon to respond to criminal charges against him and the company in connection with alleged tax crimes.

Read the charges: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20982374/indictment-final.pdf

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/01/politics/trump-organization-allen-weisselberg/index.html

THE SCHEME

4. Beginning from at least 2005 to on or about June 30, 2021, the defendants and others devised and operated a scheme to defraud federal, New York State, and New York City tax authorities. The purpose of the scheme was to compensate Weisselberg and other Trump Organization executives in a manner that was “off the books”: the beneficiaries of the scheme received substantial portions of their income through indirect and disguised means, with ‘compensation that was unreported or misreported by the Trump Corporation or Trump Payroll Corp. 10 the tax authorities. The scheme was intended to allow certain employees to substantially understate their compensation from the Trump Organization, so that they could and did pay federal, state, and local taxes in amounts that were significantly less than the amounts that should have been paid. The scheme also enabled Weisselberg to obtain tax refunds of amounts previously withheld 3 and remitted to federal and state tax authorities. Further, the scheme involved the failureof the “Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corp. to withhold income taxes on wages, salaries, bonuses and other forms of compensation paid to certain employees. The scheme also allowed the Trump Organization to evade the payment of payroll taxes that the Trump Organization was required to pay in connection with employee compensation.

5. One of the largest individual beneficiaries of the defendants’ scheme was Allen Weisselberg. During the operation of the scheme, the defendants arranged for Weisselberg to receive indirect employee compensation from the Trump Organization in the approximate amount of $1.76 million. As described below, the defendants enabled Weisselberg to receive this compensation in ways that enabled the corporate defendants to avoid reporting it to the tax authorities, and that did not result in the withholding of income tax by the corporate defendants Weisselberg then concealed the compensation from his tax preparer and intentionally omitted it from his tax retums. Additionally, Weisselberg concealed for years the fact that he was a resident of New York City who was required to pay New York City income taxes. During the period of the scheme, Weisselberg thereby evaded approximately $556,385 in federal taxes, approximately $106,568 in state taxes, and approximately $238,159 in New York City taxes, and he falsely claimed and received approximately $94,902 in federal tax refunds and approximately $38,222 in state tax refunds, to which he was not entitled.