NEW YORK: Donald Trump’s company and its long-time finance chief were charged on Thursday in what prosecutors called a sweeping and audacious tax fraud scheme in which the executive collected more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation, including apartment rent, car payments and school tuition.

The former US president himself was not charged, but prosecutors noted that he signed some of the compensation cheques at the centre of the alleged scheme.

It is the first criminal case to come out of New York authorities’ two-year investigation into the former president’s business dealings.

According to the indictment unsealed on Thursday, from 2005 through this year, the Trump Organisation and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg cheated the state and city out of taxes by conspiring to pay senior executives, Weisselberg included, off the books, by way of lucrative fringe benefits and other means.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2021