Manafort Under Scrutiny for $40 Million in “Suspicious” Transactions

2018/2/20 18:35:08

Photo: Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort

 

As the special counsel investigated President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, authorities obtained details on “suspicious” banking activity that was first unearthed in 2014 and 2015. Those records were part of an FBI operation to track an international kleptocracy that ultimately failed, but which Robert Mueller’s team resurrected.

 

Editor’s Note: UBO believes a second round on indictments will come in the near future and will center on Paul Manafort, his long-time business partner Rick Gates (who reportedly has just made a deal to lighten his own sentence by telling all he knows about the “international kleptocracy;” i.e. Viktor Yanukovych and Ukraine’s Party of Regions) and will reveal facts that have an immense impact on U.S. Congressional elections in November this year and Ukrainian presidential elections in 2019.

 


Posted on Buzzfeed, February 20, 2018, at 5:32 a.m.

 

By Jason Leopold (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Anthony Cormier (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Tanya Kozyreva(BuzzFeed Contributor)

 

Federal law enforcement officials have identified more than $40 million in “suspicious” financial transactions to and from companies controlled by President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort — a much larger sum than was cited in his October indictment on money laundering charges.

 

The vast web of transactions was unraveled mainly in 2014 and 2015 during an FBI operation to fight international kleptocracy that ultimately fizzled. The story of that failed effort — and its resurrection by special counsel Robert Mueller as he investigated whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election — has never been fully told.

 

But it explains how the special counsel was able to swiftly bring charges against Manafort for complex financial crimes dating as far back as 2008 — and it shows that Mueller could still wield immense leverage as he seeks to compel Manafort to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

 

Last week, Mueller’s team told a judge that it had evidence Manafort committed bank fraud, and news organizations have reported that the special counsel may be preparing additional charges.

 

Manafort’s spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but Manafort pleaded not guilty to all charges in the October indictment. In the past, Manafort has maintained that his financial dealings have all been above board and proper. Manafort is also suing the Justice Department, seeking to overturn the appointment of the special counsel on grounds that Mueller’s mandate is too broad and gives him “carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across.”

 

The kleptocracy squad

 

In 2014, then–attorney general Eric Holder announced an FBI team that would tackle international kleptocracy — and its first target would be ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, Manafort’s longtime client and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

To find the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars Yanukovych and his aides were suspected of stealing, the task force scoured the globe, working with governments in Cyprus, Latvia, Ukraine, and elsewhere, said two former federal law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the effort. In doing so, the team stumbled across Manafort. As one of the former officials recalled, agents were told that he might have leads on where Yanukovych had stashed his money.

 

As a political consultant, Manafort buffed the image of Yanukovych and autocrats across the world, including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). He earned a fortune and spent millions on art, clothes, home theaters, even antique rugs. As the task force heightened its scrutiny of Manafort, the US Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit unearthed a mountain of evidence about him.

 

Eight banks filed 23 “suspicious activity reports” between 2004 and 2014, which includes the years that Manafort and his consulting company, Davis Manafort Partners, worked for Yanukovych. These reports, reviewed by BuzzFeed News, show that between October 2008 and July 2013, Manafort’s personal and business accounts received about $30 million from banks in offshore havens such as Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

 

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By law, banks must file suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department when they spot transactions that bear hallmarks of money laundering or other financial misconduct. Such reports can support investigations and intelligence gathering — but by themselves they are not evidence of a crime.

 

Throughout 2014, the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, conducted further investigation into the transactions flagged in the bank’s suspicious activity reports. Treasury officials requested additional information from law enforcement agencies in other countries, and they prepared numerous and extensive reports about Manafort's financial dealings. Those reports — sent to FBI agents and federal prosecutors, and reviewed by BuzzFeed News — stated that Manafort appeared to be running shell companies and that his transactions often lacked a clear business purpose and showed signs of “layering,” meaning that they seemed designed to obscure the original source of the money.

In the summer of 2014, an FBI special agent questioned Manafort at his attorney’s office in Washington, DC. Manafort denied knowing anything about money reportedly stolen by the Yanukovych government, according to internal FBI emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News, and promised to turn over documents to the Bureau. He never did, according to the two officials.

 

“We had him in 2014,” one of the former officials said. “In hindsight, we could have nailed him then.”

 

The FBI’s top brass, both of the former officials said, deemed Manafort’s suspected financial crimes as too petty: They amounted to only tens of millions of dollars — small potatoes compared to what Manafort’s boss, Yanukovych, was suspected of stealing.

 

But the task force didn’t get Yanukovych either. The US government, the former officials said, devoted far too few resources to build a case of the scale and complexity needed to prosecute the former Ukrainian president, and agents assigned to the task force left because they felt they were unable to properly do their jobs.

 

When the investigation petered out, the reports on Manafort and the detailed financial records that supported them were all shelved, two former law enforcement officials who worked on his case told BuzzFeed News. But banks continued to send in suspicious activity reports on transactions involving Manafort or his companies all the way through 2016. For instance, in April and September 2015, PNC Bank flagged two transactions for a total of about $75,000.

 

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https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/ ... ce=CSAMedition#.iaZJ9xoYp

 

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