Moshe Lax

Lax, Trump’s partner in her first independent business venture, was once close to the Trump family. He introduced Trump to her future husband, Jared Kushner, at a gathering of real estate heirs he convened in New York a decade ago. Trump writes at length of meeting Lax and creating Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry with him in her 2010 memoir, “The Trump Card.” Lax’s plans for expanding Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry never came to pass. Trump’s team says she severed her licensing arrangement with Lax before she entered the White House. Tiffany Trump attended a launch party for his latest venture, a retail business in Manhattan called Code. The Justice Departmern suit, which seeks more than $60 million in unpaid tax liabilities, was brought in the Southern District of New York by lawyers in the Justice Department’s tax division. It alleges that Lax, his sister Zlaty Schwartz, and his late father, Chaim Lax, engaged in a series of complex “sham transactions” designed to fraudulently evade tax liability. The government alleges the family members undertook 10 separate schemes “designed to hide the Lax family assets from the IRS and other creditors and make it appear as though the Estate was insolvent.”