Banker says Trump’s financial statements were key to loan approvals, but there were 'sanity checks'
A retired bank official has testified that Donald Trump obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in loans using financial statements that a court has since deemed fraudulent
NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in loans using financial statements that a court has since deemed fraudulent, a retired bank official testified Wednesday at the former president’s New York civil fraud trial.
Trump’s “statements of financial condition” were key to his approval for a $125 million loan in 2011 for his golf resort in Doral, Florida, and a $107 million loan in 2012 for his Chicago hotel and condo skyscraper, former Deutsche Bank risk management officer Nicholas Haigh testified.
But although the bank didn’t conduct its own full appraisals of Trump's properties, it sometimes gave sizable “haircuts” to the values he'd placed on such holdings as Trump Tower and his golf courses, Haigh said.
“I think the phrase we used might have been ‘sanity checks’ on the numbers,” he said.
Those numbers helped Trump secure bigger loans and lower interest rates, said Haigh, who headed the risk group for the bank’s private wealth management unit from 2008 to 2018.
A judge last month ruled that the former president and his company, the Trump Organization, committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Trump’s assets and net worth on the financial statements he gave to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.
Trump's longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, acknowledged in testimony Tuesday that information in the financial statements wasn't always accurate.
Trump denies any wrongdoing, emphasizing disclaimers on the documents that he says alerted lenders to do their own homework. The
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