Former President Trump Reportedly Turns to Small US Lender Axos After Major Banks Shun Him

NEW YORK (Sputnik) - Shunned by major financial institutions amid allegations he had illegally inflated his asset values to get loans, former President Donald Trump has taken to banking with one of America’s least known and smallest lenders called Axos Financial, NBC News reported.

An obscure, internet-only institution based in San Diego and Las Vegas, Axos refinanced in February a $100 million mortgage due in September for New York City-based Trump Tower, the report said, citing a document from the city’s finance department.

Trump turned to Axos amid investigations by the New York Attorney General’s office that he used illegally inflated financial statements to defraud US banks into providing him favourable loans. Mazars, an accounting firm used by Trump, told a New York court in February that it had informed the former president that it can no longer back financial statements it had prepared for the Trump Organisation and his other private businesses.

Axos itself is scheduled to be in court later this month to defend itself from a lawsuit by a former internal auditor who alleges that he was wrongfully fired for raising an alert about the company’s risky lending practices, the report noted. Axos denies all the allegations.

Axos was founded in 2000 and had some $15.5 billion in assets at the end of last year. This makes it a relatively small lender compared with America's largest bank, JPMorgan, which has assets worth over $3 trillion.