Trump Organization’s outside accountant testifies he ‘would have had a heart attack’ if he’d seen the ‘secret’ Christmas bonus lists

• The primary protection witness within the Trump Org. tax-fraud trial is exterior accountant Donald Bender.

• He testified Tuesday he “would have had a coronary heart assault” if he’d seen how the corporate paid X-mas bonuses.

• Executives acquired bonuses in piecemeal checks signed by Trump, in what the DA says was a tax-dodge.

A longtime exterior accountant for the Trump Group testified at its tax-fraud trial on Tuesday that he would have been greater than shocked if he’d seen the corporate’s annual “secret” lists of Christmas bonus funds.

“I in all probability would have had a coronary heart assault,” Donald Bender, who did the corporate taxes for 35 years, informed a Manhattan jury on Tuesday.

For years, former President Donald Trump personally signed stacks of bonus checks that have been then stuffed into the vacation playing cards of favored firm executives, jurors have already heard within the trial.

However the yearly govt bonus handouts have been a part of a 15-year payroll tax dodge scheme that reached proper to the highest of the corporate, prosecutors try to show.

The bonuses ought to have been reported of their entirety on firm W-2s annually, as taxable revenue. However they weren’t, prosecutors have charged.

As an alternative, prosecutors alleged executives obtained the majority of their annual bonuses in separate checks from quite a lot of Trump Group subsidiaries, as if they’d labored the earlier yr as freelancers or contractors for Wollman Rink, Mar-a-Lago, the Trump Worldwide Golf Membership in Palm Seaside, Florida, and even Trump Productions, which produced “The Apprentice.”

That approach, prosecutors alleged, the corporate saved on withholding and acquired to write down off the checks as subsidiary bills. In the meantime, the executives have been in a position to declare the checks as freelance revenue, which allowed them to stash a few of that cash in tax-free financial savings accounts accessible solely to the self-employed.

For instance, in 2015, the Trump Group paid out $1.1 million in govt bonuses and paid Allen Weisselberg, its chief monetary officer, a $300,000 bonus, based on paperwork.

Story continues

Of that, $100,000 was paid correctly, as compensation claimed on Weisselberg’s W-2 wage assertion for that yr.

However $75,000 of the bonus was paid to him in a test from Wollman Rink, as if the now-75-year-old CFO had moonlighted that yr on the famed Central Park skating rink.

The rest of his bonus was paid in $50,000 checks with three totally different payors, as if Weisselberg had accomplished work the earlier yr for the Palm Seaside golf membership, Mar-a-Lago, and “The Apprentice.”

On the stand final week, Weisselberg testified that these funds violated tax reporting necessities.

Cautious data have been saved internally of how firm bonuses have been paid, some titled “The Trump Group Christmas Bonuses.”

Trump’s initials are on a few of these data. He personally permitted the overall bonus quantities to be obtained annually by such executives as Weisselberg, firm normal counsel Jason Greenblatt, controller Jeffrey McConney, and COO Matthew Calamari, based on paperwork.

However Trump’s initials should not on spreadsheets detailing what prosecutors say was the unlawful a part of the scheme — charts detailing which subsidiaries have been paying the bonus checks.

Bender, who works for the Mazars accounting agency, testified Tuesday that he by no means noticed these purported heart-attacks-on-a-chart, not till Manhattan prosecutors confirmed them to him in 2021.

If he had seen these charts and realized the extent of the scheme, he would have sounded an alarm, he informed jurors, underneath cross-examination by Susan Hoffinger, one of many lead prosecutors.

“I in all probability would have had a coronary heart assault,” he mentioned, earlier than apologizing for the hyperbole and explaining he meant he would have been “very involved,” and certain would have alerted his agency, Mazars.

The accounting agency severed ties with Trump and the Trump Group earlier this yr, citing a historical past of monetary “discrepancies” on the firm.

A protection witness, Bender’s testimony might assist the protection argue that Trump, too, was saved in the dead of night concerning the subsidiaries paying govt bonuses as if it was exterior compensation.

The trial is off for the remainder of the week. Bender’s testimony, and the protection case, might be accomplished Monday, with closing arguments doable as early as Tuesday.

Trump shouldn’t be personally named as a defendant within the five-week-old prison trial, however his firm might resist $1.6 million in penalties if convicted of conspiracy, scheme to defraud, and mendacity on official data.

Learn the unique article on Enterprise Insider