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The former president’s New York portfolio includes the gold-plated Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, 40 Wall Street and the Trump Park Avenue hotel, where Bob Dylan met The Beatles for the first time.

Will Thomas, a business law professor at the University of Michigan, said: “The business in many respects is still owned by the family, but it is out of the family’s control.”

If Trump resisted payment, the judgment would take effect immediately and the state could begin seizing his assets, Thomas said.

Thomas said relocating his business to a new state would also be more difficult following the judgment.

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Engoron had initially ordered the dissolution of much of Trump’s New York holdings, but pulled back in his ruling on Friday, leaving that question to an independent monitor.

The company’s financial reporting will be overseen by the independent monitor and a compliance director.

Trump vented his fury in an angry address from his Mar-a-Lago, Florida home, in which he framed the case as “corrupt” and a politically motivated “witch hunt”.

He has not indicated who could lead his company should the ruling be upheld.

But he is known to prefer keeping his business within his family’s hands and could turn to Ivanka, who previously held a senior position in the company, or her husband, Jared Kushner, who also has real estate experience.

Trump could even consider turning to his wife, Melania, to lead the company.

Brian Quinn, a professor at Boston College Law School, told the Washington Post: “This is going to be a business that will look very different. It won’t be a family-run business. It can be a family-owned business, but it won’t be a family-run business for the next several years.”

However, it is the financial penalty which could deal the biggest immediate blow.

Trump, who is the front-runner to be the Republican presidential candidate in this November’s White House race, has divested some of his property holdings into more liquid assets since entering politics.

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His net worth was recently estimated to be $US3.1 billion by Bloomberg’s billionaires index, with about $US600 million in cash assets.

He has also been ordered in a separate civil suit to pay $US83.3 million to the magazine columnist E Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape.

The financial penalties, if upheld, including the interest owed, could wipe out most of Trump’s disposable cash, or even force him to sell a property to cover the costs.

The ruling is a victory for Letitia James, New York’s Democratic attorney-general, who brought the case after being elected in 2019 in part on a promise to investigate Trump’s business dealings.

On Friday she said Trump was “finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating and staggering fraud”.

In his decision, Engoron, known for his colourful style, quoted the early 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope’s declaration that “to err is human, to forgive is divine.”

Trump and his sons, the judge wrote, “apparently are of a different mind”.

“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he wrote.

Telegraph, London