by Jack Queen and Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump was fined $354.9 million (329.3 million euros) by a US court on Friday for exaggerating his fortune in order to deceive bankers and obtain loans from more favorable conditions.
This judgment threatens his real estate empire a few months before the presidential election in the United States during which he should try to regain the White House against outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden.
At the end of a three-month trial in Manhattan, Judge Arthur Engoron also banned Donald Trump for three years from holding management or directorships in any company headquartered in New York.
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Arthur Engoron also reversed a previous decision taken in September ordering the “dissolution” of the entities controlling Donald Trump’s real estate empire, stating that such an initiative was no longer necessary due to his appointment of a supervisor independent for the activities of the former president of the United States.
In his harsh judgment, the judge wrote that Donald Trump and his co-defendants were “incapable of admitting their mistakes”.
“Their total lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathology,” says Arthur Engoron. “Instead, they adopted the ‘I see nothing, I hear nothing, I say nothing’ attitude that the evidence disproves.”
According to the accusation brought by prosecutor Letitia James, Donald Trump exaggerated his fortune, up to $3.6 billion per year for a decade, to deceive his bankers.
The former American president, who should again obtain the nomination of the Republican Party for the presidential election in November in the United States, described these prosecutions as a political cabal led by a Democratic prosecutor.
Alina Habba, his lawyer, described this judgment as “manifest injustice” and “the paroxysm of a witch hunt carried out for years for political purposes”.
Arthur Engoron also banned Donald Trump and the companies cited in the ruling from seeking any loan from a financial institution based in New York for three years, which should severely limit the former president’s ability to borrow from major American banks.
(French version Bertrand Boucey)
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