"Within days, Donald Trump could potentially have his sprawling real estate business empire ordered ‘dissolved’ for repeated misrepresentations on financial statements to lenders, adding him to a short list of scam marketers, con artists and others who have been hit with the ultimate punishment for violating New York’s powerful anti-fraud law,” the AP reports.
“An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under the law showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous times, and Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses.”
According to the article, the businesses that were dissolved were in the midst of ongoing scams of the general public, and dissolving the companies was seen as the best way to contain the damage.
Trump’s fraud was comfined to banks, who are supposed to do due diligence on their customers, and are in a position to absorb losses. That doesn’t excuse Trump’s fraud, but it does suggest that simply removing the Trumps from the ability to do business in the state (along with that hefty financial penalty) would be enough.
And I think forcing the remainder of Trump’s businesses in NY to continue under someone else’s leadership will sting him more than if the State just liquidated it all.
I see that the headline was changed from “Dissolved” to “Taking away”. Those are quite different outcomes!