Unable to Vouch for Work, Accounting Firm Drops Trump

Mazars says financial statements it compiled with information from company can't be relied on
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 14, 2022 5:36 PM CST
Accounting Firm Drops Trump
Pedestrians cross Fifth Avenue in front of New York's Trump Tower, headquarters of the Trump Organization, last year.   (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

At a time when former President Donald Trump and his company are facing investigations into their business practices, they've lost the support of longtime accounting firm Mazars USA. The firm wrote to the Trump Organization last week that it is no longer Mazars' client. The letter also said the firm was retracting the annual financial statements it compiled for Trump for 2011 to 2020 that were based on information provided it, the New York Times reports. Mazars said that though it hadn't "as a whole" found significant differences between the information it used and the actual value of Trump assets—the issue that criminal and civil investigations are looking into—it can't, given the circumstances, stand behind the documents. Mazers said anyone given the statements should be told they're not to be relied on.

Trump employed the annual statements when negotiating loans. The New York state attorney general and Manhattan district attorney are investigating whether he used them to fraudulently win the best terms for the loans. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, told Congress that the Trump Organization manipulated the value of assets to reduce its tax obligations and improve terms for loans and insurance policies, per CNBC. Last month, the attorney general's office said Trump's financial statements portrayed valuations "in broad terms and in ways which were often inaccurate or misleading" when put up against the information the Trump Organization provided to its accounting firm.

Mazars said it based its decision on court filings by the attorney general's office, its own investigation, and other information. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization issued a statement expressing disappointment at the severed relationship but saying that Mazars' work was done to professional standards and that there were no material discrepancies in the statements, per CNBC. Mazars said that while gathering the Trump information, it had "become aware of departures from accounting principles." (More Trump Organization stories.)

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