Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm has announced the end of the business relationship. The decision was based on an “unavoidable conflict of interest”. The annual balance sheets for the period between June 2011 and June 2020 are “no longer reliable”.
Donald Trump’s auditors are ending the collaboration because they can no longer rely on the “annual accounts”.
(dpa)
Ex-US President Donald Trump’s long-standing auditing firm has ended its collaboration in the course of the investigation into his corporate empire and revoked financial reports. The end of the business relationship is due to an “unavoidable conflict of interest,” said Mazars in a letter to the Trump Organization. This emerges from court documents from Monday (local time). The auditors also come to the conclusion that the annual balance sheets for the period between June 2011 and June 2020 are “no longer reliable”. The company advised the Trump Organization to notify degree recipients.
“While we have not concluded that the various financial statements as a whole contain material inconsistencies, given the aggregate of the circumstances, we believe that our advice to you that you no longer rely on these financial statements is reasonable,” it said it in the letter of February 9th. The auditors had prepared the financial statements based on information provided by Trump and his company. The Trump Organization was disappointed with the auditors’ decision, the New York Times quoted a statement from the company as saying. It shows, however, that the investigations of the public prosecutor’s office are superfluous.
The New York prosecutor’s office accuses Trump’s corporate empire of fraudulent business practices. The aim of these practices was to get a “variety of economic benefits”, such as insurance protection or tax deductions, New York Attorney General Letitia James explained. “As recent filings show, there is mounting evidence that Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization used fraudulent and misleading financial reports to gain economic advantage,” Democrat James said Monday. The comprehensive investigation is about, among other things, the suspicion that Trump’s company has given false information about the value of its real estate.