When the extent of Trump’s involvement in Russian money laundering began coming out a few months ago, and that it goes far beyond him, a federal prosecutor in New York was asked how this had gone on so long and why these things aren’t prosecuted more. They were quoted (under anonymity) as basically saying that if they prosecuted all the money laundering, fraud, and other assorted financial crimes, the entire economy of New York City would collapse.
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Yes it is. They’re not liable for the client lying to them, but the preparer signs under penalty of perjury for the information as presented to them. And if they should have known the client was lying - like for example, the client saying that some amount of money was income and then saying “no, let’s call that a loan instead” - that’s not a defense.
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Accountants are professionals with high standards of behavior. Even crooked accountants usually have enough pride to work within the gray areas and not do stupid things like openly talk about changing income to a loan. This isn’t just an offense against accountants, but an offense against crooked accountants.
Thus said, if you’re rich and want to cheat on your taxes, you hire a tax lawyer to do the dirty work of setting things up to hide income since they don’t have professional standards at all. The tax accountants just do what they’re told and it’s all fine as long as they don’t know what’s inside the box.
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If I were Mr. Manafort, I’d be asking my attorneys about a plea deal. Luckily, I am not.
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The CEO at one of the companies I worked, before we were sold, spent several years doing accounting Jujitsu regarding our credit lines and other issues after a downturn in the industry. He succeeded holding the banks off but lost one manager to ethical concerns. Drove the financial guys crazy. We could never close the books on a normal schedule because the CEO would start moving things about after looking at preliminary reporting. I would have thought the auditors would have said something as they never had post adjustments after the period was finally closed. I suspect he was hovering in that territory.
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The rich guy Manafort hired Rick Gates to be clever… now the defense wants us to believe Gates stole from an innocent Manafort. Gates wasn’t clever enough to get by the tax preparer unnoticed… how could he be clever enough to fool Manafort?
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Yes and corporations are audited, routinely.
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That’s what has me wondering. Manafort is not dumb. He and his lawyers know the evidence against him. That has me wondering what they feel they have going for them. Anyone know what court would handle the appeal if he was convicted?
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Wait a minute. Is she the only employee of that tax prep firm? If she had reservations about what she was asked to do, she could have gone to her boss and said that they were asking her to input false information. Then let the management deal with Manafort and Gates. Did she tell anyone at the firm what she was being asked to do?
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Remember the Arthur Andersen scandal with Enron?
The rating agencies leading up to the mortgage meltdown?
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He appears to be wanting to just brazen it out in the hope that he can baffle 'em with bullshit.
Manafort has that kind of entitled cockiness that refuses to accept that anyone is smarter or more cunning than he is.
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Let’s face it, today’s testimony is essentially a knock out blow against Manafort on the loan fraud and tax fraud charges. There is so much clear, direct documentary evidence backed by testimony that the story for the jury should be relatively easy to grasp. This case is so well put together that I don’t see politics entering into it. In fact, I’d say the prosecution has thus far done a good job of making things quite simple and easy for the jury to understand. The inability of the Manafort defense to challenge Mueller’s authority before the jury or (ironically) to bring in the Trump factor has limited Manafort’s ability to draw a juror and get a mistrial.
The way this case has proceeded has also made it difficult for Trump to really do anything to help him. A self-interested pardon isn’t worth it unless it ends everything. If Manafort hasn’t offered anything on the #trumprussia matter, then pardoning him looks bad as an admission of guilt, and yet would have no effect on pending cases. Mueller’s strategy thus far does not rely on Manafort to flip. He would be more of an added bonus at this point.
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She is a boss. She signed the return which means she is a partner or shareholder of that accounting firm. A regular employee in an accounting firm, whether one is an accountant or not, doesn’t sign a return.
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Sorry about being a little on the touchy side a few days ago. I generally have better control on my emotions. I may have worded my OJ comments wrong. That said, you were incorrect when you said OJ walked because they overcharged him with first degree instead of second. I remember the day the jury came in with their verdict very well. I thought I remembered they did have the option of finding OJ guilty of second degree murder. They did. From September 22,1995: ( about ten days before the verdict)
Giving jurors greater leeway to return a guilty verdict, Judge Lance Ito ruled Thursday that the jury can consider lesser charges of second-degree murder against O.J. Simpson.
The decision is a major blow to defense attempts to limit jury options to premeditated murder in the first degree or outright acquittal. Jurors who believe that Simpson committed the double homicide in an uncontrollable rage-but did not plan it-now can find him guilty of murder in the second degree.
Ito’s ruling came despite passionate pleas from Simpson’s team of defense lawyers.
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You have to know your client. Some are honest and you can give them a little rope. Some not so much, every thing they tell you has to be confirmed.
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The updated story (Immunized witness regrets) now says they discussed on the phone how much of the income to classify as a loan. After Gates said manafort wouldn’t have enough money to pay his taxes otherwise. I withdraw everything I said about grey areas and pressure and tax preparers not wanting to get in business trouble. That’s well into the hiring an accountant joke territory.
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All of those accountants had their careers ruined. Here in Texas the CPA board releases a quarterly newsletter exposing all the unethical and criminal accountants in the state. There were quite a few CPA’s who lost their careers thanks to Enron. I don’t think any profession has the high standards accountants have. Nobody’s perfect, but most professions don’t even care.
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It does certainly look like the Mueller team have done a great job of scrubbing all politics from this case, leaving Donnie nothing to work with on the pardon front.
Given that, I’m currently considering an alternate theory - Mueller doesn’t need a plea deal from Manafort in this case at all, but would be well served by having a scalp nailed to the wall when negotiating with the long list of other folks in the pipeline, so maybe they didn’t offer him a deal option and are going for the win to start racking up scalps and putting the fear of Dog in the hearts and minds to come?
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While they may have technically had the option to convict him on Murder 2, the prosecution’s case was solely about Murder 1. That’s what drove the entire trial and the jury’s thought process in my view. Because the prosecution clearly had gaps in their case for murder 1, it forced the jury to look at reasonable doubt and for some jurors allowed them an option that would not have been available had the prosecution focused on Murder 2.
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