The Trump Organization has decided to go without a chief financial officer now that Allen Weisselberg, who last had the position, is serving his second jail sentence.
Donald Trump’s family company’s decision to forgo having a top financial executive was a footnote in the latest report from a former federal judge tasked with ensuring that the company operates honestly. The filing was made on Tuesday as part of the court order issued in February that the Trump Organization must pay nearly half a billion dollars for committing bank fraud over a decade.
The Trump real estate empire is undergoing internal changes, Barbara S. Jones, the former federal judge who has been serving as the company’s monitor for more than a year, wrote in the report. The purpose is to prevent additional bank and insurance fraud.
Still, to go without a CFO at a company of the Trump Organization’s size is a rare and puzzling move. Although the company is privately held and does not need to issue public reports, Trump has claimed in government disclosures that his corporate entities bring in tens of millions of dollars in income.
Jones’ report made clear that one of Trump’s sons, Eric, is currently in charge as executive vice president. He oversees executives who manage the accounting at commercial properties, hotels and golf courses, opting to rely on them instead of a CFO because the Trump Organization “represented” that “would be duplicative,” Jones wrote.
Four business entities connected with the business mogul’s Doral golf course in Florida and three buildings in New York — Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street and the Trump International — “are now required to prepare and disclose annual audited financial statements” to lenders, per Jones’ report. It was Donald Trump’s rampant inflation of property values on official paperwork that landed him in hot water to begin with, and this latest measure is seen as a means to avoid that from happening again.
Jones also reported that the Trump Organization “is no longer preparing statements of financial condition” and “does not intend to develop any estimations of value for any entity.” Instead, the company is leaving that task up to whatever lender would be willing to do business with the firm — or it is now offering to “retain an independent appraiser.” These issues became a central focus of the three-month trial late last year, during which Trump defended his tendency to slap whatever value he saw fit on his “one-of-a-kind” properties.
The changes come after two related Trump corporations were found guilty of tax fraud during a trial in 2022, several others were found to have engaged in bank fraud at a separate trial in 2023 and even more internal shenanigans were on display during the recent criminal trial against Trump for faking business records to cover up his porn star hush money payments earlier this year.
Lawyers for the Trumps and their corporate entities did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.