Paul Manafort

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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:50 pm

BLOOD MONEY
Posted on September 20, 2017 by Zev Shalev and Tracie McElroy
EXPOSED: THE MANY POSSIBLE CRIMES OF PAUL MANAFORT.

Depending whom you ask, Paul Manafort is either a political genius or one of the world’s biggest criminals. He is potentially both – in the most Machiavellian sense of those combined terms.

The 63-year-old political strategist and lobbyist is the central figure in a complex criminal scheme which has disrupted global events for over a decade, culminating in his tour of duty as the campaign chairman for a Russian-engineered campaign to elect Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election.

In July, federal agents burst into Manafort’s apartment in Alexandria, Virginia in a pre-dawn raid. They ordered him and his wife, Kathleen, out of bed and searched them for weapons. Investigators hauled away business binders and copies of his computer files. They also took photos of his expensive Italian-made suits, a leaked detail which may hint at Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s potential indictment.

Prosecutors told Manafort they intend to indict him for possible tax law violations, money laundering, failing to register as foreign agent and using offshore holdings in criminal activity going back 11 years. Manafort’s phone was tapped under a FISA warrant from 2014 to early 2016 and then again before the election until after the inauguration.

The many possible crimes of Paul Manafort.
Image
Putin friend Oleg Deripaska (left) signed a $10 million-a-year deal with former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort (right) in 2006.
Manafort worked for the Kremlin since 2006 and is alleged to have stolen millions from Ukrainians.

In June 2005, Paul Manafort met with unassuming Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. U.S. diplomatic cables at the time described Deripaska as “among the two to three oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis” and “a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin’s trips abroad.”

Manafort and Deripaska struck a lucrative $10 million-a-year deal to lobby for Russia beginning in 2006. Under the arrangement, Manafort would influence Russian politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics. Deripaska has since been banned from the U.S. for ties to organized crime but he’s traveled here as a Russian diplomat.

In 2007, Manafort and Deripaska partnered in an offshore company registered in the Caymen Islands. Deripaska invested $18.9 million in a Ukrainian telecom and paid Manafort’s firm $7.4 million. Deripaska later backed out of the deal and sued Manafort for the return of his Money.

It should be noted that a favorite Russian money laundering technique is for two conspiring companies to set up a joint offshore company whose only purpose is to connect two international parties via a phony transaction. One of the parties then sues the other in order to obtain a judge’s ruling which effectively “cleans” the money through a corrupt court in the country in which the offshore holding is registered.

Manafort set up a similarly suspect offshore company with Ukrainian oligarch Dmitro Firtash. They hatched a plan to buy New York’s Drake Hotel then cancelled the deal leaving employees stranded without salaries. Firtash is wanted in the U.S. on suspicion of bribery and organized criminal activity. He was arrested in Austria in 2014 and is expected to be extradited to the US soon. Firtash may provide direct evidence to implicate Manafort. Both of Manafort’s known offshore holding were exposed in the Panama Papers.

The many possible crimes of Paul Manafort.
Image
Former Ukrainian President and Putin puppet Viktor Yanukovych (left) was elected in a campaign run by Paul Manafort (right). They became so close they started dressing alike with similar haircuts
Manafort fomented political division in Ukraine resulting in the death of 100 Ukrainian protesters.

Manafort’s consulting efforts for the Kremlin officially ended in 2009 but he stayed in the Kremlin’s orbit assisting Vladimir Putin in his invasion and political disruption of Ukraine.

In 2010, he helped elect former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych is a violent convicted felon but Manafort was able to ‘rebrand him’ by fomenting divisive politics. “He used damaging techniques to divide Ukrainian society and help Putin to achieve a simple goal,” Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, told Bloomberg.

Manafort and Yanukovych became close albeit through a translator, as neither of them spoke each other’s’ language. The bromance was cemented in lengthy sauna conversations which spanned from politics to style. They became so close, “Yanukovych started to resemble Manafort in his Italian suits and carefully coiffed dark hair parted on the side,” according to Bloomberg. This could explain why prosecutors took photos of Manafort’s suits when they barged into his apartment.

Yanukovych’s party illegally paid Manafort $12.7 million for his work between 2007 and 2012. Investigators found a “black ledger” detailing the payments in Manafort’s Kiev office. One $750,000 payment Manafort received was invoiced to a Belize-registered offshore company called Neocon.

In 2014, Manafort advised Yanukovych on the final days of his Putin-backed presidency which resulted in the death of 100 protestors. Manafort’s daughter, Andrea, decried his new-found riches as “blood money” in text messages which were later published after her phone was hacked.

Yanukovych was deposed by the 2014 demonstrations and he fled to Moscow. Manafort continued to consult for pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, earning another $1 million and making seventeen trips to the country.

Much of Manafort’s international offshore dealings were routed through the Bank Of Cyprus. Investigators obtained documents of Manafort’s Cypriot transactions earlier this year. The bank is widely considered a Russian laundering front. It’s former Vice Chair Wilbur Ross is Trump’s Commerce Secretary, is also under investigation.

U.S. Investigators have been working with Ukrainian prosecutors as “part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukrainian assets,” according to the Associated Press.

The many possible crimes of Paul Manafort.
Image
Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak (left), Paul Manafort (center) and Jeff Session (right) take their seats at the same time before a Russia-hugging foreign policy address by Donald Trump at Washington D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel in April 2016.
Manafort brought his divisive politics to the U.S. on behalf of the Kremlin and Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Manafort has been in Republican politics since his days at Georgetown law school in the early 70’s. He later worked for the campaigns of General Ford, Ronald Reagan, the first President Bush and Bob Dole. He also served as the deputy political director for the Republican National committee.

Manafort’s big shot at political fame in the U.S. came when he joined the Trump Campaign in March last year. A month later, he was at a Trump campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C., also attended by Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Michael Flynn and Jeff Sessions. It remains a mystery if the group held any formal meetings at the hotel. Manafort’s surveillance warrant was likely not in effect then though it’s widely believed Ambassador Kislyak’s phone was monitored as a matter of course.

Manafort was promoted to campaign chairman in June giving him control of its then $20 million budget, included approval on advertising and media strategy. That’s important because of suspected coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in targeted Facebook advertising began as early as June 2015.

In June 2016, Manafort took notes on his phone while at a meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and several Russian operatives who had been actively working on dropping the Magnitsky sanctions against Russia. The Russians’ stated intent of the meeting was to hand over dirt on Hillary Clinton. The FBI obtained Manafort’s notes from the meeting which may lead to another criminal indictment involving espionage.

In July, Manafort engineered the selection of Mike Pence as Donald Trump’s VP pick by faking a mechanical issue with Trump’s plane, forcing the presidential nominee to overnight in Pence’s home town of Indianapolis. Pence has his own ties to Deripaska but it’s unknown if these extend to any offshore holdings.

Manafort was in charge of the campaign when Wikileaks published the first batch of Russian hacked DNC emails. A Trump Tower server linked to Russia’s Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health recorded a dramatic increase in traffic after the hack. The server was likely reconciling stolen voter data Russia had hacked with other publicly available data. Investigators were surveilling the servers as part of a FISA warrant, as first reported by Louise Mensch’s Patribotics blog and later confirmed by the BBC.

In August, Manafort was forced to resign after his “black ledger” of payments from Ukraine was exposed. He continued to advise Trump and VP Mike Pence behind the scenes.

The FBI resumed their wiretaps before the election so their surveillance likely included conversations between Manafort and Pence who spoke daily throughout the transition. Pence was instrumental in selecting Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser even after he was warned Flynn may be compromised by the Russians.

The many possible crimes of Paul Manafort.
Image
Mike Pence (left) was selected as Donald Trump’s running-mate after Paul Manafort (right) faked a mechanical issue with Trump’s plane forcing Trump to overnight in Indianapolis, Pence’s home town.
Manafort’s lobbying for ruthless dictators and ties to a suspect campaign funding operation with ties to gambling families and Trump.

Back in 1980, Manafort launched Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm with another Trump adviser Roger Stone. They represented murderous warlords and dictators from the Philippines to Angola. The firm retroactively registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

One of BMSK’s senior directors, Dennis Whitfield, is also an adviser to the Strategic Campaign Group. In May, investigators raided the SCG offices in Annapolis, Maryland.

Investigators took computers which may implicate the company in an attempt to defraud donations intended to support Republican candidates. SCG shares an address with a law firm linked to another offshore company owned by the Cordish gambling family. Reed Cordish serves as assistant to the president for intragovernmental and technology initiatives at the White House and reports directly to Jared Kushner.

The Strategic Campaign Group is also linked to Penn National Gaming, which was a partner in Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump’s casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year of operation resulting in a $10 million fine, according to CNN.

If Manafort is indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller it could be at the same time as others involved in his criminal scheme.

Elizabeth de la Vega spent 21 years as a Federal prosecutor, including four years as part of an organized crime strike force. She believes Mueller will indict Trump, Flynn, Manafort simultaneously to remove the possibility of a pardon. “Here, as a practical and logistical matter, Trump has no way to pardon Flynn, Manafort, Kushner and others until they are indicted,” de la Vega tweeted. “It is most likely that Mueller will indict Trump, Flynn, Manafort et al. simultaneously. At that point, Trump is out of luck,” she says.
https://narativ.org/2017/09/20/blood-money/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:20 am

Manafort offered to give Russian billionaire ‘private briefings’ on 2016 campaign

Then-Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort talks to reporters at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July 2016. (Matt Rourke/AP)
By Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman, Carol D. Leonnig and Adam Entous September 20 at 5:04 PM
Less than two weeks before Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign chairman offered to provide briefings on the race to a Russian billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Paul Manafort made the offer in an email to an overseas intermediary, asking that a message be sent to Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with whom Manafort had done business in the past, these people said.

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016, email, portions of which were read to The Washington Post along with other Manafort correspondence from that time.

The emails are among tens of thousands of documents that have been turned over to congressional investigators and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team as they probe whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia as part of Moscow’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

There is no evidence in the documents showing that Deripaska received Manafort’s offer or that any briefings took place. And a spokeswoman for Deripaska dismissed the email ex­changes as scheming by “consultants in the notorious ‘beltway bandit’ industry.”

Play Video 2:08
FBI agents raided Manafort's home in predawn search

FBI agents raided the home of President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort without warning on July 26 with a search warrant, and seized documents and other records, say people familiar with the special counsel investigation. (Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Nonetheless, investigators believe that the exchanges, which reflect Manafort’s willingness to profit from his prominent role alongside Trump, created a potential opening for Russian interests at the highest level of a U.S. presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the probe.

Several of the ex­changes, which took place between Manafort and a Kiev-based employee of his international political consulting practice, focused on money that Manafort believed he was owed by Eastern European clients.

The notes appear to be written in deliberately vague terms, with Manafort and his employee, Konstantin Kilimnik, never explicitly mentioning Deripaska by name.

Investigators believe that key passages refer to Deripaska. The billionaire is referenced in some places by his initials, “OVD,” and one email invokes an expensive Russian delicacy in what investigators believe is a veiled reference to Manafort’s past work with Deripaska.

In one April exchange days after Trump named Manafort as a campaign strategist, Manafort referred to his positive press and growing reputation and asked, “How do we use to get whole?”

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni said Wednesday that the email ex­changes reflected an “innocuous” effort to collect past debts.

“It’s no secret Mr. Manafort was owed money by past clients,” Maloni said.

Play Video 1:40
Four controversial figures Paul Manafort did business with
As a lobbyist and political consultant in the 1980s, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with international clients that included two dictators who were then allied with the United States. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Maloni said no briefings with Deripaska ever took place but that, in his email, Manafort was offering what would have been a “routine” briefing on the state of the campaign.

Vera Kurochkina, a spokeswoman for Rusal, the company led by Deripaska, on Wednesday derided inquiries from The Post that she said “veer into manufactured questions so grossly false and insinuating that I am concerned even responding to these fake connotations provides them the patina of reality.”

The email exchanges add to an already perilous legal situation for Manafort, whose real estate dealings and overseas bank accounts are of intense interest for Mueller and congressional investigators as part of their examination of Russia’s 2016 efforts. People close to Manafort believe Mueller’s goal is to force the former campaign chairman to flip on his former Trump associates and provide information.

In August, Mueller’s office executed a search warrant during an early-morning raid of Manafort’s Alexandria, Va., condominium, an unusually aggressive step in a white-collar criminal matter.

Mueller has also summoned Maloni, the Manafort spokesman, and Manafort’s former lawyer to answer questions in front of a grand jury. Last month, Mueller’s team told Manafort and his attorneys that they believed they could pursue criminal charges against him and urged him to cooperate in the probe by providing information about other members of the campaign. The New York Times reported this week that prosecutors had threatened Manafort with indictment.

The emails now under review by investigators and described to The Post could provide prosecutors with additional leverage.

Kilimnik did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

Deripaska, one of Russia’s richest men, is widely seen as an important ally of President Vladi­mir Putin. A U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006, published by WikiLeaks, referred to Deripaska as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”

The billionaire has struggled to get visas to travel to the United States because of concerns he might have ties to organized crime in Russia, according to the Wall Street Journal. He has vigorously denied any criminal ties.

Russian officials have frequently raised the matter over the years with U.S. diplomats, according to former U.S. officials familiar with the conversations.

In 2008, one of Manafort’s business partners, Rick Davis, arranged for Deripaska to meet then-presidential candidate John McCain at an international economic conference in Switzerland.

At the time, Davis was on leave from Manafort’s firm and was serving as McCain’s campaign manager. The meeting caused a stir, given McCain’s longtime criticism of Putin’s leadership.

The Post reported in 2008 that Deripaska jointly emailed Davis and Manafort after the meeting to thank them for setting it up. Davis did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment.

At the time of the McCain meeting, Manafort was working in Ukraine, advising a Russia-friendly political party. He ultimately helped to elect Viktor Yanukovych as president in 2010. In 2014, Yanukovych was ousted from office during street protests and fled to Moscow.

Manafort and Deripaska have both confirmed that they had a business relationship in which Manafort was paid as an investment consultant. In 2014, Deripaska accused Manafort in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments and then failing to account for the funds, return them or respond to numerous inquiries about exactly how the money was used. There are no signs in court documents that the case has been closed.

The emails under review by investigators also show that Manafort waved off questions within the campaign about his international dealings, according to people familiar with the correspondence.

Manafort wrote in an April 2016 email to Trump press aide Hope Hicks that she should disregard a list of questions from The Post about his relationships with Deripaska and a Ukrainian businessman, according to people familiar with the email.

When another news organization asked questions in June, Manafort wrote Hicks that he never had any ties to the Russian government, according to people familiar with the email.

Hicks, now the White House communications director, declined to comment.

Former campaign officials said that Manafort frequently told his campaign colleagues that assertions made about him by the press were specious. Hicks, however, told colleagues that she was uncomfortable with Manafort’s style and concerned he was not always putting the candidate’s interests first.

The emails turned over to investigators show that Manafort remained in regular contact with Kilimnik, his longtime employee in Kiev, throughout his five-month tenure at the Trump campaign.

Kilimnik, a Soviet army veteran, had worked for Manafort in his Kiev political consulting operation since 2005. Kilimnik began as an office manager and translator and attained a larger role with Manafort, working as a liaison to Deripaska and others, people familiar with his work have said.

People close to Manafort told The Post that he and Kilimnik used coded language as a precaution because they were transmitting sensitive information internationally.

In late July, eight days after Trump delivered his GOP nomination acceptance speech in Cleveland, Kilimnik wrote Manafort with an update, according to people familiar with the email exchange.

Kilimnik wrote in the July 29 email that he had met that day with the person “who gave you the biggest black caviar jar several years ago,” according to the people familiar with the exchange. Kilimnik said it would take some time to discuss the “long caviar story,” and the two agreed to meet in New York.

Investigators believe that the reference to the pricey Russian luxury item may have been a reference to Manafort’s past lucrative relationship with Deripaska, according to people familiar with the probe.

Kilimnik and Manafort have previously confirmed that they were in contact during the campaign, including meeting twice in person — once in May 2016, as Manafort’s role in Trump’s campaign was expanding, and again in August, about two weeks before Manafort resigned amid questions about his work in Ukraine.

The August meeting is the one the two men arranged during the emails now under examination by investigators.

That encounter took place at the Grand Havana Club, an upscale cigar bar in Manhattan. Kilimnik has said the two discussed “unpaid bills” and “current news.” But he said the sessions were “private visits” that were “in no way related to politics or the presidential campaign in the U.S.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 0c29ca77e1
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:28 pm


Manafort’s Email Came Days Before the Convention Shenanigans

By JOSH MARSHALL Published SEPTEMBER 21, 2017 8:00 PM


The Washington Post reported yesterday that amongst the tens of thousands of documents Paul Manafort has turned over to congressional investigators and the Special Counsel’s offers were emails between Manafort and his Ukrainian deputy Konstantin Kilimnik. In one of those emails he tells Kilimnik to pass on word to a top Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska that he could provide briefings on the state of the presidential campaign.

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” wrote Manafort.

Manafort has a long and complicated business relationship with Deripaska (as Seinfeld would say, not that there’s anything wrong with that). But the date of this email is interesting. Deripaska is reputed to be very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A US diplomatic cable which Chelsea Manning gave to Wikileaks described him in 2006 as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” The date of the email is July 7th 2016. That’s just four days before the Trump campaign intervened to soften the language of the GOP platform about providing lethal military assistance to Ukraine – an oddity that has never been fully explained or really explained in any clear way.

According to the Post, there’s no evidence that the kind of briefing Manafort offered ever took place. Did Manafort and Deripaska actually connect up and have a conversation that led to the platform shenanigans? Who knows? Anything’s possible. But one of the mysteries of that weird incident is that at the end of the day the minutiae of a party platform really doesn’t matter very much. Even given the lack of ‘local’ knowledge a Russian might have about American politics, that’s probably pretty clear. So what was the point?

That gets us to an important way to think about how this whole drama may have really unfolded. The emails reviewed by the Post strongly suggest that Manafort saw his top perch in the Trump campaign as a way to make money – either to drum up new business in what used to be the USSR or to collect on debts he thought various ex-clients owed him. The Post referenced one email where Manafort asked his colleague “How do we use [this] to get whole?” That is to say, how do we capitalize on this new-found opportunity to get financially sound again, to make a bunch of money?

I don’t think we should dismiss the possibility that Manafort didn’t need direction. Or to put it another way, Manafort – sensing an opportunity for the big, big money – might have found opportunities to be helpful or clearly friendly as a way to facilitate that expressed desire to cash in on Trump. This seems not only possible but quite likely.

Nor is this so odd from the point of view of whoever was behind the curtains in Russia. Intelligence operations or efforts to ‘turn’ or compromise someone don’t usually begin with a straight-up ask. Often they begin with efforts to test someone’s receptivity to committing bad acts. That’s the best read of what was happening in that Trump Tower approach to Donald Trump Jr. It can also be as simple as putting a pot of money in front of someone like Manafort and seeing what he comes up with on his own. Let’s also remember this was almost exactly a month after Manafort sat in on that Trump Tower meeting Donald Trump Jr scheduled with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. A lot was happening during this critical period. They’re likely connected. Just not necessarily in the most obvious or literal ways.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/man ... henanigans
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 23, 2017 9:54 am

Paul Manafort May Hold the Key: Who Was He Really Working For?
Trump’s shady former campaign chair is central to the Russia probe — and he shaped the administration more than we knew.

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon September 22, 2017, 1:14 PM GMT


It's always risky to write a recap of the week's latest events in the Russia scandal on a Friday morning, since more often than not all hell breaks loose on Friday night. But this week's been so full of news, what with a horrible earthquake in Mexico, another devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico, a disastrous speech by Donald Trump speech at the UN and a calamitous health care bill poised to pass the Senate, that Russia news seems almost anti-climactic. But in any other week, the information that has emerged in the last few days about the investigation would be dominating the front pages of papers all over the country.

There are a number of threads to the story to pull together. The first is that special counsel Robert Mueller has sent requests to the White House asking for various documents pertaining to Trump's actions as president. These include the firing of James Comey and Michael Flynn, as well as requests for telephone records from Air Force One on the day the president helped draft the false statement about Donald Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting with a purported representative of the Russian government, in hopes of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. Even the White House lawyers are compelled to cooperate, thanks to Ken Starr and the Republicans' obsessive pursuit of Bill Clinton's sex life back in the 1990s. At that time, courts held that the president's attorneys had to reveal any information they might possess about potential crimes implicating him.

There is no longer any doubt that Mueller's office is investigating the president for possible obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation, and it doesn't seem to be limited to events surrounding the Comey firing.

We've known the outlines of this before, but the details of Mueller's requests show that he's stepping up the pressure on the White House and will be focusing on individual staff members to testify about what they saw and heard during this entire period. Notably, Mueller's staff has requested information from former White House press secretary Sean Spicer about his public comments pertaining to Comey's firing.

That request has in turn led to the revelation that Spicer has kept copious notes going all the way back to the Republican convention, the Trump campaign, the transition and into the administration. Those will undoubtedly be of great interest to the special counsel and possibly the congressional committees. When asked about these notebooks, Spicer told his old friend Mike Allen of Axios to stop texting and calling him or he'd "call the proper authorities." As the Mueller investigation starts to close in on the White House, things are getting tense in Trump world.

But for all that intrigue, it wasn't the biggest Russia investigation story of the week. Since he was the man who ran what was known as "The Torturer's Lobby" in Washington for many years, it's only fitting that Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is slowly roasting over a very hot spit. This week CNN confirmed that Manafort had been under a FISA surveillance warrant by American intelligence services from 2014 through 2016 under suspicion of ... something. The warrant wasn't in effect during the period Manafort worked for Trump's campaign, but the government reportedly began to track his communications once again from the fall of 2016 through at least the spring of this year.

Manafort has been involved with a lot of shady characters over the years (and I do mean a lot), so it's difficult to know specifically why he was a surveillance target. But the Washington Post reports that among the documents Manafort turned over to the congressional committees are emails he sent to an employee named Konstantin Kilimnik, who allegedly has ties to Russian intelligence. In those emails, Manafort appears to be offering to set up meetings between Trump and a notorious Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska, who has previously been denied entry into the U.S. because of ties to organized crime.

These emails seem to be written in a sort of code to obscure Deripaska's identity, but nobody has had much trouble figuring it out. At one point Manafort wonders if arranging this meeting will make him "whole." Manafort's spokesman said that he was just trying to collect some money owed to him, but since Deripaska had filed suit against Manafort in 2014 for $17 million, it might make more sense to conclude that Manafort was offering to trade contact with Trump for a relief of his debt, rather than the other way around.

This raises the the question once again as to why in the world Manafort was supposedly working for a billionaire candidate for free. It's not as if Manafort was a longtime Trump friend or a true believer in Trump's ideology, whatever that is. He's a hired gun and hired guns don't work for nothing. He is not the type of guy who doesn't get paid.

Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider put together a narrative of Manafort's tenure with the Trump campaign that's very useful in drawing the bigger picture. The bottom line is that it is starting to look very much as if Manafort was working for someone other than Donald Trump.

What we don't know is what other people on the campaign knew, including Trump himself. To this day he can't bring himself to say anything negative about Vladimir Putin. His irrational attempts to shut down the investigation do not suggest the behavior of a man with nothing to hide.

Manafort left his job as campaign chair in August 2016, but continued to be involved. He made one key decision before his official departure: He made sure that Trump chose Mike Pence as his running mate. When Pence took over the presidential transition team after Chris Christie was let go, according to the Daily Beast, Manafort came back in the tent, helping to choose cabinet members and speaking with Trump and Pence on a regular basis. He even advised the incoming administration on how to handle the Russia investigation.

So Manafort, who had resigned after a wave of reports detailing his shady relationships with Russia-aligned Ukranian politicians, was up to his neck in the Trump transition. During the same period when Jared Kushner was meeting with Russian bankers and talking to the Russian ambassador about back channels at the Russian embassy, and Mike Flynn was on the horn promising to lift the Russia sanctions. Nobody remembered to put any of these meetings on their applications for security clearance.

It's not clear whether Trump has stayed in contact with Manafort since he became president. I'm sure his lawyers go to bed every night praying that he didn't.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... ly-working
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 26, 2017 6:48 pm

Exclusive: IRS shares information with special counsel in Russia probe
By Manu Raju, Pamela Brown and Evan Perez, CNN
Updated 5:38 PM ET, Tue September 26, 2017
IRS shares info with special counsel in Russia probe

Washington (CNN)The IRS is now sharing information with special counsel Robert Mueller about key Trump campaign officials, after the two entities clashed this summer over both the scope of the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and a raid on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's home, people briefed on the matter tell CNN.

Part of the concern centered on the far-reaching and broad requests from Mueller's team. In the case of Manafort, Mueller's investigators are reaching back 11 years as they investigate possible tax and financial crimes, according to search warrant documents. Mueller is bound by a written order issued by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May which allows the special counsel to investigate "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."
After several months of being at odds, one source said, the IRS Criminal Investigation division is now sharing information about campaign associates, including Manafort and former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. The sharing happened after the two camps reached an agreement following consultation with officials at the Treasury Department.
Special counsel interviews with White House staff could start later this week

CNN has learned the IRS Criminal Investigation agents had been working with the FBI to investigate Manafort since before the election in a similar probe that centered on possible money laundering and tax fraud issues, according to the sources. It's unclear if Flynn is now or was previously under investigation by the IRS. CNN has reported that Mueller's team is examining Flynn's payments from Turkey and Russia.
A former high-level Justice Department official says the information shared would include anything tax return-related such as real estate and banking records. The former official added the IRS is very restricted in what information it can share under Title 26 US Code and would normally need a specific grand jury subpoena in order to share tax returns with another agency.
close dialog

The new information about the depth of IRS involvement renews questions surrounding the controversial issue of President Donald Trump's tax returns, which he refused to release during the campaign despite decades of precedent by presidential candidates.
It is not clear whether the special counsel has asked for or obtained Trump's tax returns. Sources say if Mueller's office does have Trump's returns, then Rosenstein, who oversees the probe, likely would have needed to sign off, given the sensitivity surrounding the matter.

White House stonewalls Capitol Hill over records in Russia probe

Tension between the IRS and the special counsel played out behind the scenes of the high-profile raid on Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia, home this summer, according to multiple sources.
CNN has learned that the IRS did not participate in the July raid by FBI agents in part because of IRS objections that the search would interfere with the separate IRS investigation of Manafort, according to people briefed on the investigations.
The special counsel's office decided to proceed with the search on Manafort's home with only FBI agents carrying it out, the sources said.
The absence of IRS criminal investigations agents for the raid is unusual for a probe that centers on tax and financial matters. As CNN has previously reported, during the raid the FBI collected tax and other financial documents from Manafort's home, according to search warrant documents in the Manafort raid. The search warrant documents said the scope of the investigation includes possible crimes beginning January 1, 2006, a source told CNN.

Exclusive: OGE crafting a new advisory on legal defense funds

Manafort has previously denied financial wrongdoing regarding his Ukraine-related payments, his bank accounts in offshore tax shelters and his various real estate transactions over the years.
The complications could continue in the event Mueller's team brings charges against Manafort and others under investigation. Mueller's team has warned Manafort that they are working to charge him with possible tax and financial crimes, sources previously told CNN, an indication the investigation could be in an advanced stage.
Flynn's lawyers have previously criticized media reports about his connection to the Russia investigation as peddling "unfounded allegations" and "outrageous claims." Flynn's lawyer declined to comment for this story. Manafort's lawyer didn't immediately comment for this story.
The IRS Criminal Investigation division and the special counsel's office declined to comment.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/26/politics/ ... index.html



Dem senator: '99 percent sure' Manafort, Flynn will face criminal charges
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 09/26/17 02:14 PM EDT 413

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Tuesday that he is nearly certain that former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn would be indicted after special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia's election interference.

“I'm about 99 percent sure there will be some criminal charges from this investigation,” Blumenthal told Politico, saying he was most certain about Manafort, a former campaign chairman for President Trump, and Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, facing indictment.

He added that “there may well be others" that face charges as a result of Mueller’s probe.
Mueller’s probe has homed in on Manafort in recent months. FBI agents working with Mueller raided Manafort’s home in July, and he was reportedly told during the raid that he should expect to be indicted.

The federal government reportedly wiretapped Manafort during and after the 2016 election cycle.

Flynn has also been under scrutiny since he resigned as national security adviser for misleading Vice President Pence about what he discussed in meetings with Russian officials. He has refused to testify before congressional committees also investigating Russia's election meddling without the promise of immunity.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3525 ... al-charges




Renato Mariotti‏Verified account
@renato_mariotti

THREAD: What does the latest news of Mueller's investigation of potential tax crimes tell us?
2:29 PM - 26 Sep 2017

1/ Today @CNN published this story about Mueller receiving information from the IRS:

2/ To those of you who have followed me for a long time, this is not surprising news. I told you back in August that I believed Mueller had

3/ tax returns and then a few weeks later that the involvement of the IRS Criminal Investigations unit meant he was looking at tax crimes.

4/ So what *is* new in this story? For one thing, the story indicates that Mueller is looking back 11 years in the case of Manafort:

5/ Tax crimes cannot be charged 11 years back but can be charged as part of a conspiracy to defeat the lawful functioning of the IRS if

6/ Manafort acted to further the conspiracy in the last five years. Moreover, any of Manafort's prior conduct could be considered by the

7/ judge at sentencing if he is convicted of *any* crime. I suspect Mueller is gathering this information to get as much leverage over

8/ Manafort as possible, not because he intends to charge 11 years worth of false tax return charges. Another interesting tidbit in the

9/ story is conflict between Mueller and the IRS. I wouldn't make much of this. It's not uncommon for there to be tension between agencies

10/ working on overlapping investigations. There can be rivalry between the agencies. But in the end that works itself out and it won't

11/ undermine the investigation. One final tidbit is that the story has one piece of inaccurate information--it suggests that Mueller would

12/ ordinarily use a grand jury subpoena to obtain tax returns. Actually he would need to get a court order, which is routinely done in

13/ investigations of this type. I discussed the process in this thread:Renato Mariotti added,

14/ Lastly, the story indicates that it's unknown whether the President's tax returns were obtained. Mueller would have the power to do so

15/ if they were relevant to his investigation but we don't know if he's done so. /end

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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 28, 2017 6:35 pm

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Manafort’s Offer to Russian Oligarch Was Tied to Disputed Deal
By Stephanie Baker , David Voreacos , and Volodymyr Verbyany
September 27, 2017, 3:17 AM CDT

Trump’s campaign chair had long-running fight with Deripaska

Allegations of missing money spun out of cable deal in Ukraine



Manafort Offer to Russians Is Said to Be Tied to Dispute

When Donald Trump’s campaign chairman offered private briefings to a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin last year, he wasn’t only appealing to a superpower, he was pursuing a personal mission: the end to a costly dispute over a failed business deal.

The campaign’s chairman, Paul Manafort, wanted a meeting in hopes of resolving a long-simmering dispute with the Russian, said two people familiar with the offer.

The message, sent by email on July 7, 2016, through an intermediary, was never delivered to the intended recipient, Oleg Deripaska, and the briefings never occurred, the people added.

But the correspondence compounds questions about the allegiances of Manafort, who famously offered to work for the campaign without payment. Though a presidential campaign is a 24/7 job, Manafort’s dispute with Deripaska apparently worried him enough to seek a meeting -- and even to trade on his powerful job to lure the billionaire.

The two men were squabbling over a failed attempt by a private equity fund led by Manafort to buy a Ukrainian cable network. It’s not clear what became of the money that Deripaska provided for the venture. Years after the deal, Deripaska’s company sued, seeking an accounting of how the money was spent. The details are now even more clouded because lawyers for the men have since agreed to resolve the matter outside court -- and outside public view, according to one of the people.

Their relationship is of keen interest to U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Manafort’s business dealings as part of his probe into Russian interference with the U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between Trump campaign operatives and the Kremlin. As part of the probe, U.S. authorities have made a formal request to Cyprus for bank and company records linked to Manafort and Rick Gates. Several Manafort-related companies linked to the deal are registered in Cyprus. Gates was his partner in the private equity fund. Cyprus authorities haven’t responded. Gates, through his lawyer, declined to comment.

‘No Communications’

Vera Kurochkina, a spokeswoman for Deripaska, said, “Mr. Deripaska had no communications, meetings, briefings or other interactions with Mr. Manafort during, after, or in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.


“And in fact, Mr. Deripaska had not communicated with Mr. Manafort for years prior to 2016,” she said. “Thus, any publication suggesting or implying that Mr. Deripaska directly or indirectly communicated with Mr. Manafort in 2016 would be a false statement of fact.”

Manafort declined to comment. His spokesman, Jason Maloni, told the Washington Post (which first reported on the message intended for the billionaire) that Manafort’s emails were an innocuous effort to collect past debts.

The intermediary who was supposed to deliver the message, Konstantin Kilimnik, also declined to comment. A Manafort protégé, Kilimnik began working for him in 2005 in Ukraine, where his boss advised Russia-backed politicians for a decade.

Manafort, 68, made his name as a Republican political strategist, and later, by polishing the rough edges of foreign leaders to make them more palatable to voters at home while advancing their interests in Washington. He served as Trump’s campaign chairman for six months before resigning in August 2016 as details emerged about his work in Ukraine.

Deripaska, 49, grew up poor but made a fortune by building a metals empire; his En+ Group Ltd. owns a 48 percent stake in United Co. Rusal, the world’s largest producer of aluminum outside China. A 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable, published by Wikileaks, describes him as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”

Black Sea Cable

The two met through a mutual acquaintance, and Manafort ended up working on behalf of Deripaska’s businesses to gain access to markets in the European Union and elsewhere, according to a person familiar with the matter. That consulting arrangement ended by 2007.

The same year, Manafort and Deripaska met in Moscow several times and began a new business venture. At first their relationship was cordial, the person said, calling it the meeting of two minds who liked to think strategically.

They formed a partnership called Pericles Emerging Market Partners LP, based in the Cayman Islands, to invest in businesses in Eastern Europe. Deripaska agreed to invest $100 million. Their first and only deal was a cable and Internet company based in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa called Black Sea Cable, run out of a dingy, Soviet-style apartment building about six miles (10 kilometers) from the city center.

Deripaska’s Surf Horizon Ltd. put in $18.9 million for the purchase, and it paid Manafort $7.35 million in management fees, according to court records.

The structure of the transaction was opaque, with money flowing through a web of companies in tax havens like the Caymans and Cyprus. Other aspects of the deal are puzzling, too.

Company Ownership

While Deripaska’s entities transferred millions to Manafort-linked shell companies to buy Black Sea Cable, it’s not clear that Manafort entities ended up owning the company or what became of the money.

In April 2008, Gates told Deripaska that they had bought the asset, but the owners of Black Sea never changed. A British company called TechCorp Universal was the primary owner of Black Sea from 2007 to 2010, according to Ukrainian records. TechCorp was controlled by two companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and later Belize. Kiev prosecutors are investigating those companies, which are linked to past corruption scandals tied to associates of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a longtime client of Manafort’s.

A legal complaint filed by Deripaska in Virginia said a Pericles entity had paid a Ukrainian $17.8 million to complete the deal. Now serving in the Ukrainian army, which is fighting against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country, that Ukrainian tells a different story. Andrey Vityukov, when contacted recently, said he’d provided some legal services to Black Sea at the time but denied he’d received the money or knew Manafort or Gates.

Furthermore, Black Sea Cable was worth only a fraction of what Deripaska agreed to pay for it, said Piotr Gaber, central and eastern European Media analyst at S&P Global Markets. He estimated its 2008 value at $4.5 million, based on similar deals for cable companies in the region. The company had 50,000 to 60,000 subscribers and about $1.5 million in revenue that year, based on average revenue per subscriber in Ukraine.

"They definitely overpaid,” he said. “For the same amount of money they could have bought a cable company in Hungary or Poland which would have generated a lot more cash."

Given the history of corruption in Ukraine, the use of offshore tax havens and the complexity of the deal, "there could be red flags for potentially suspicious activity relating to money laundering or other financial crimes,” said Ross Delston, a Washington attorney and anti-money laundering expert.

In July, the FBI raided Manafort’s northern Virginia home, picking the lock to get in, frisking his wife and copying his computer files, one of the people said.

The search warrant, which sought records dating back to 2006, said prosecutors are investigating several possible crimes, including wire and mail fraud, money laundering, false statements and tax offenses, the person added.

‘Where’s Paul?’

Once the Ukrainian cable deal unraveled, Deripaska tried to get audits on the Black Sea investments but didn’t hear back from Manafort or Gates, according to Cayman Island court records. In 2014, a former partner of Manafort’s got a call from a Washington lobbyist working for Deripaska.

“Where’s Paul?” the lobbyist asked Rick Davis, another onetime partner of Manafort who recently recounted the interaction. Davis responded that he hadn’t seem him in years. “Well the guy has disappeared, and Deripaska wants to know where his money is,” came the lobbyist’s reply.

It’s not entirely clear why Manafort decided last summer was the time to reach out to Deripaska, though he mentions in the July email that local reporters in Kiev were sniffing around on the deal.


Companies connected to Manafort and Deripaska have had financial ties for years, records show. One of them is LOAV Advisors Ltd., a company registered in Cyprus connected to Manafort. It owed more than $7.3 million to a company based in the British Virgin Islands that was linked to Deripaska, Oguster Management Ltd. That loan was extended from 2009 to 2013, the most recent record available. Oguster was dissolved after the election in January 2017.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... puted-deal
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:31 pm

Did Manafort Use Trump to Curry Favor With a Putin Ally?
Emails turned over to investigators detail the former campaign chair's efforts to please an oligarch tied to the Kremlin.

JULIA IOFFE AND FRANKLIN FOER 12:50 PM ET POLITICS

On the evening of April 11, 2016, two weeks after Donald Trump hired the political consultant Paul Manafort to lead his campaign’s efforts to wrangle Republican delegates, Manafort emailed his old lieutenant Konstantin Kilimnik, who had worked for him for a decade in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort wrote.

“Absolutely,” Kilimnik responded a few hours later from Kiev. “Every article.”

“How do we use to get whole,” Manafort asks. “Has OVD operation seen?”

According to a source close to Manafort, the initials “OVD” refer to Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and one of Russia’s richest men. The source also confirmed that one of the individuals repeatedly mentioned in the email exchange as an intermediary to Deripaska is an aide to the oligarch.

The emails were provided to The Atlantic on condition of anonymity. They are part of a trove of documents turned over by lawyers for Trump’s presidential campaign to investigators looking into the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election. A source close to Manafort confirmed their authenticity. Excerpts from these emails were first reported by The Washington Post, but the full text of these exchanges, provided to The Atlantic, shows that Manafort attempted to leverage his leadership role in the Trump campaign to curry favor with a Russian oligarch close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Manafort was deeply in debt, and did not earn a salary from the Trump campaign.

There is no evidence that Deripaska met with Manafort in 2016, or knew about Manafort’s attempts to reach him. Yet the extended correspondence between Manafort and Kilimnik paints a more complete portrait of Manafort’s willingness to trade on his campaign position. Manafort is a high-profile focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the possibility of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. FBI agents raided Manafort’s home in July.


Deripaska had been Manafort’s client in various post-Soviet states, but the relationship soured after an investment Manafort managed for Deripaska fell apart. Manafort had represented Deripaska in Georgia and Ukraine, and his firm also represented Deripaska’s commercial interests in Montenegro.

In 2007, Manafort and his partners established a private equity fund that would acquire Ukrainian firms and merge them into larger national entities. Manafort and his partners collected over $7 million in fees for managing this fund from firms controlled by Deripaska, according to a 2014 petition filed in the Cayman Islands, filed by Deripaska’s lawyers.

In 2008, Deripaska transferred $18.9 million to the fund so that it could purchase Black Sea Cable, a Ukrainian telecommunication company, according to the petition. It’s not clear what became of Deripaska’s investment, or if the private-equity fund actually took control of the company. In the Cayman Islands petition, his lawyers alleged the venture had been botched, and requested the “winding down of the partnership.” The petition alleges that when Deripaska asked for an accounting of the investment in 2013, Manafort simply didn’t respond. “It appears that Paul Manafort and [his deputy] Rick Gates have simply disappeared,” the Russian oligarch’s lawyers wrote.

Manafort’s spokesman Jason Maloni has denied that Manafort had done anything wrong. “With respect to the Caymans controversy. Mr. Manafort believes the matter is dormant and will not be pursued further,” he said in a prepared statement. A search of court records shows no filings since 2015.


The emails do not specify how Manafort hoped “to get whole,” but they repeatedly refer to the matter at the heart of the Cayman Islands dispute. It is unclear from the Cayman Islands petition, or from a 2015 filing in Virginia by the liquidators appointed by the Caymans court, whether the collapse of the joint venture left Manafort in debt to Deripaska.

But according to financial records filed in Cyprus in 2015, Manafort was in debt to shell companies connected to pro-Russian interests in Ukraine for some $16 million. Maloni denies that Manafort owed funds to Deripaska, insisting instead that it was Manafort who hoped to collect on debts owed by former clients. “It’s no secret Paul was owed money going back to 2014,” Maloni said in a separate prepared statement. He described the emails as “innocuous.”

Vera Kurochkina, a spokesperson for Deripaska, offered a different account. “The suggestion that Mr. Deripaska owes money to Mr. Manafort is absurd,” she said. “Except for the contents of these emails, Mr. Manafort has never made any such claim. To the contrary, as set out in widely reported court filings, it is Mr. Manafort who has failed to provide any accounting in respect of investments for which he was responsible. Mr. Manafort is the debtor here, not the creditor.”

Despite his apparently precarious financial situation, Manafort went to work for the Trump campaign for free in March 2016. Later that year, he took out $16 million in loans against his New York properties. (The loans are now being investigated by both the Manhattan District Attorney and the New York Attorney General.) In the email exchange that took place two weeks after starting on the campaign, Manafort seemed primarily concerned with the Russian oligarch’s approval for his work with Trump—and asked for confirmation that Deripaska was indeed paying attention.


“Yes, I have been sending everything to Victor, who has been forwarding the coverage directly to OVD,” Kilimnik responded in April, referring again to Deripaska. (“Victor” is a Deripaska aide, the source close to Manafort confirmed.) “Frankly, the coverage has been much better than Trump’s,” Kilimnik wrote. “In any case it will hugely enhance your reputation no matter what happens.”

Kurochkina denied that claim. “There is no evidence that these or any other emails were sent by either Mr. Manafort or Mr. Kilimnik to Mr. Deripaska and they were not,” she said. “Mr. Deripaska had no communications, meetings, briefings, or other interactions with Mr. Manafort during, after, or in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election or for many years prior to that time.”

By the end of April, Manafort was vying for control of the Trump campaign, and was named its chairman on May 19. On July 7, two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort again wrote to Kilimnik. He forwarded questions he’d received from a reporter for the English-language Kyiv Post about Black Sea Cable—the sole investment made by the venture. Manafort asked Kilimnik, “Is there any movement on this issue with our friend?” Manafort seemed concerned about whether the journalist’s probing had caught the attention of Deripaska. A source close to Manafort confirmed to me that “our friend” indeed referred to the Russian oligarch. Kilimnik did not respond to requests for comment.


Referring to the journalist from the Kyiv Post, “I would ignore him,” Kilimnik wrote back, responding within minutes to reassure Manafort that it was just “a junior reporter” and nothing to worry about.

In the back-and-forth that followed, Kilimnik suggested that Manafort’s efforts to please Deripaska were succeeding.

“I am carefully optimistic on the issue of our biggest interest,” Kilimnik went on. “Our friend V said there is lately significantly more attention to the campaign in his boss’s mind, and he will be most likely looking for ways to reach out to you pretty soon, understanding all the time sensitivity. I am more than sure that it will be resolved and we will get back to the original relationship with V.’s boss.” The source close to Manafort confirmed that “V” is a reference to Victor, the Deripaska aide.

Manafort had spent several lucrative years working for Deripaska, both as a high-priced consultant-for-hire in former Soviet republics, and as an investor of Deripaska’s money before the collapse of their venture. Manafort jumped on the suggestion that the campaign might offer the opportunity to restore his relationship with Deripaska: “Tell V boss that if he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” he wrote back eight minutes later.

On July 8, the Kyiv Post story on Manafort and Black Sea Cable dropped, outlining in detail how Manafort’s investment on Deripaska’s behalf went “awry.” Kilimnik forwarded the story to Manafort, and added a note to soothe him. “Nothing new here, other than bad and shallow journalism,” he wrote. Manafort, however, seemed more concerned with what Deripaska might think. “You should cover V on this story and make certain that V understands that this is all BS,” Manafort writes, “and that the real facts are the ones we passed along last year.”


On July 29, a week after Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort received another email from Kilimnik, this one with the subject line “Black Caviar.” “I met today with the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar several years ago,” Kilimnik wrote. “We spent about 5 hours talking about his story, and I have several important messages from him to you. He asked me to go and brief you on our conversation. I said I have to run it by you first, but in principle I am prepared to do it, provided that he buys me a ticket. It has to do about the future of his country, and is quite interesting. So, if you are not absolutely against the concept, please let me know which dates/places will work, even next week, and I could come and see you.”

Manafort agreed to the cryptic request, responding “Tuesday is best.”

By this point, the correspondence between Manafort and Kilimnik had grown even more veiled. There was no longer mention of Victor or even V; the reference to Deripaska as OVD had fallen out. Yet there are two clues that may hint at the identity of the person whom Kilimnik describes as “the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar.” One is a reference to “his country,” apparently not the same as Kilimnik’s, who is from Ukraine. The second is the reference to jars of black caviar. Investigators believe that to be a reference to payments, The Washington Post reported.


On July 31, Kilimnik and Manafort corresponded again to firm up their plans for a dinner meeting in New York on August 2. “I need about two hours,” Kilimnik wrote to Manafort on July 31, “because it is a long caviar story to tell.”

According to The Washington Post, Manafort and Kilimnik met on August 2 at the Grand Havana Club, a Manhattan cigar club. Kilimnik told the Post that the two “discussed ‘unpaid bills’ and ‘current news.’ But he said the sessions were ‘private visits’ that were ‘in no way related to politics or the presidential campaign in the U.S.’” The emails preceding the meeting, however, suggest they had more than bills and news to discuss. Kilimnik had said he needed to relay a “long caviar story” and “several important messages” from his contact about the “future of his country.”

Just days before Kilimnik and Manafort met for cigars and caviar stories in Manhattan, Trump appeared at a campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “Wouldn’t it be a great thing if we could get along with Russia?” he said.

Manafort was ousted from the Trump campaign later that month, following a New York Times report that Manafort’s name was listed in a secret ledger of cash payments from the ruling pro-Russian party in Ukraine, and detailing his failed venture with Deripaska. He submitted his resignation on August 19.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ka/541677/


New Manafort emails offer stronger evidence of a quid pro quo with a Russian oligarch

Natasha Bertrand

New emails published by The Atlantic on Monday offer a more detailed look at Paul Manafort's attempt to use his role on President Donald Trump's campaign team to curry favor with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally.

Manafort wrote to his longtime employee, Russian-Ukrainian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, on April 11, 2016 asking if he had shown "our friends" the media coverage he had gotten since being hired as a senior campaign strategist.

“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort reportedly wrote.

“Absolutely,” replied Kilimnik, who has come under FBI scrutiny over his purported ties to Russian intelligence. “Every article.”

“How do we use to get whole,” Manafort responded. “Has OVD operation seen?”

Investigators have concluded — and Manafort's spokesman has not disputed — that "OVD" was a reference to the billionaire's full name: Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska.

Kilimnik told Manafort in a later email that he had been "sending everything to Victor, who has been forwarding the coverage directly to OVD." Victor was a senior aide to Deripaska, The Atlantic confirmed.

The emails offer a more complete picture of the emails exchanged between Manafort and Kilimnik in the days, weeks, and months after he joined the Trump campaign — and how much Manafort still coveted Deripaska's approval years after a falling-out over a failed business venture.

'Debt cancellation is much harder to track'
Bloomberg reported last week that Manafort had offered "private briefings" about the campaign to Deripaska in hopes of resolving a years-long business dispute involving a failed Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable.

Jason Maloni, a representative for Manafort, declined to comment. But he told The Washington Post earlier this month that Manafort had simply been trying to leverage his high-level role on the campaign to collect past debts. But it was Manafort who owed Deripaska money, according to the oligarch.

In legal complaints filed in the Cayman Islands in 2014, Deripaska's representatives claim he gave Manafort $19 million that year to invest in the project. Manafort all but disappeared without paying Deripaska back when the project fell through, according to the filings.

Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who spent years in the bureau's counterintelligence division, said that offer would have been "a counterintelligence flag."

"By doing so, he shows not only a willingness to give out campaign information he received in confidence but also an intent to earn personal income by selling the briefings," Olson said.

In early 2016, Deripaska's representatives "openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him," according to The Associated Press. "After Trump earned the nomination [in May], Deripaska’s representatives said they would no longer discuss the case."

Olson, for his part, noted that "debt cancellation is much harder to track than payment. Payments leave a paper trail, debt forgiveness does not. It's a very effective way to conceal transfer of value and is another CI flag."

'Significantly more attention to the campaign'
Manafort apparently wrote to Kilimnik on July 7 asking if there was "any movement" on the Black Sea Cable "issue" with "our friend" — another reference to Deripaska, The Atlantic confirmed. Kilimnik recommended that Manafort "ignore" a Kyiv Post reporter who had asked about the feud, adding later that he was "carefully optimistic on the issue of our biggest interest."

"Our friend V [Victor] said there is lately significantly more attention to the campaign in his boss’ mind, and he will be most likely looking for ways to reach out to you pretty soon, understanding all the time sensitivity," Kilimnik wrote on July 7. "I am more than sure that it will be resolved and we will get back to the original relationship with V.’s boss [Deripaska]."

Kilimnik wrote to Manafort again on July 27 after Trump had accepted the GOP nomination:

“I met today with the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar several years ago. We spent about 5 hours talking about his story, and I have several important messages from him to you. He asked me to go and brief you on our conversation. I said I have to run it by you first, but in principle I am prepared to do it, provided that he buys me a ticket. It has to do about the future of his country, and is quite interesting."

Manafort agreed, and they met in New York on August 2.

Manafort was forced to resign just over two weeks later, when The New York Times reported that the pro-Russia political party he had worked for had earmarked him $12.7 million for his work between 2007 and 2012.

Ukrainian prosecutors have since said they've found no proof of illicit payments to Manafort, who has said he never collected the payments.

Deripaska and Manafort's business relationship stemmed back to at least 2006, when Deripaska signed a $10 million annual contract with Manafort, according to the AP, for a lobbying project in the US that Manafort said would "greatly benefit the Putin Government."

Deripaska took out quarter-page ads in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post in March 2017, after his payments to Manafort were revealed, announcing that he was "ready to take part in any hearings conducted in the US Congress on this subject in order to defend my reputation and name."
http://www.businessinsider.com/manafort ... ka-2017-10
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 13, 2017 8:04 pm

$60 Million


Oleg Deripaska

loans that are not meant to be repaid......MONEY LAUNDERING



A major news outlet like NBC News would typically have asked Donald Trump’s White House for advance comment several days before a story like this was published. That explains how Trump knew that NBC was about to expose the evidence that could prompt Paul Manafort to finally flip on him. It also explains why Trump has been essentially trying to publicly blackmail NBC into not publishing the story. That didn’t work.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/nbc ... rump/5490/



Trump Threatens to Revoke License for NBC



Manafort Had $60 Million Relationship With a Russian Oligarch
by AGGELOS PETROPOULOS and RICHARD ENGEL

LONDON — Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, has much stronger financial ties to a Russian oligarch than have been previously reported.

An NBC News investigation reveals that $26 million changed hands in the form of a loan between a company linked to Manafort and the oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin.

The loan brings the total of their known business dealings to around $60 million over the past decade, according to financial documents filed in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands.

Manafort was forced to resign from the Trump campaign in August 2016, following allegations of improper financial dealings, charges he has strenuously denied. He is now a central figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Investigators have said they are looking into Manafort's financial ties to prominent figures in Russia.

According to company documents obtained by NBC News in Cyprus, funds were sent from a company owned by Deripaska to entities linked to Manafort, registered in Cyprus.

Image: -
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks with Oleg Deripaska, head of "The base element" company at the International Investment Forum in Sochi on Sept. 19, 2008. ILIA PITALEV / AFP-Getty Images file
Deripaska’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Manafort’s spokesman, Jason Maloni, declined to give specific answers about the loans, but released a statement to NBC News saying, in part, "Mr. Manafort is not indebted to former clients today, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign.”

He later revised the statement, removing that sentence entirely. It now reads: “Recent news reports indicate Mr. Manafort was under surveillance before he joined the campaign and after he left the campaign. He has called for the U.S. Government to release any intercepts involving him and non-Americans in hopes of finally putting an end to these wild conspiracy theories. Mr. Manafort did not collude with the Russian government.”

Manafort and Maloni have received subpoenas from Mueller to supply documents and testimony in the case.

Deripaska was described in a 2006 U.S. diplomatic cable as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”

NBC News reported in June that the business relationship between Deripaska and Manafort began in 2007. According to The Wall Street Journal, they worked together to further Russian interests in Georgia.

Manafort then went on to spend nearly a decade working as a consultant for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

The NBC News investigation shows that $26 million was transferred from Oguster Management Ltd. — which is wholly owned by Deripaska, according to a disclosure filed at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange — to Yiakora Ventures Ltd. Yiakora, according to Cyprus financial documents, is a "related party" to Manafort's many interests on the island, a financial term meaning that Manafort's interests have significant influence over Yiakora.

Image: Paul Manafort Resigns As Trump Campaign Chair
Paul Manafort checks the teleprompters before Republican presidential candidate Trump's speech at the Mayflower Hotel on April 27 in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file
The investigation also confirms a smaller loan of just $7 million from Oguster to another Manafort-linked company, LOAV Advisers Ltd., a figure first reported by The New York Times. Company documents reviewed by NBC News reveal the entire amount was unsecured, not backed by any collateral.

The $7 million loan to LOAV had no specified repayment date, while the $26 million loan to Yiakora was repayable on demand. It’s not known if either sum has ever been repaid.

Lawyers specializing in money laundering said the loans appeared unusual and merited further investigation.

“Money launderers frequently will disguise payments as loans,” said Stefan Cassella, a former federal prosecutor. “You can call it a loan, you can call it Mary Jane. If there's no intent to repay it, then it's not really a loan. It's just a payment.”

The documents go on to reveal loans of more than $27 million from the two Cyprus entities to a third company connected to Manafort, a limited-liability corporation registered in Delaware.

This company, Jesand LLC, bears a strong resemblance to the names of Manafort’s daughters, Jessica and Andrea.

Jesand was used to buy a $2.5 million condo in New York in 2007, according to a New York City public document. In August 2017, according to another document, Jesand then obtained a loan of more than $1 million dollars against that property.

Using LLCs to purchase real estate is not necessarily illegal but is considered by money-laundering experts to be a potential red flag.

The $33 million uncovered by NBC News wasn't the only set of transactions between the two men to pass through Cyprus. According to a related court case, Deripaska invested another $26 million in a private equity fund earmarked for a Ukrainian telecommunications company.

The legal filing states Deripaska transferred the money through yet another Cypriot company, and claims that Manafort wanted the investments structured as loans "so as to avoid the unnecessary occasioning of Cyprus taxation.”

Highly placed government sources in Cyprus said that the island's police — following an official request by U.S. authorities this past summer — are still gathering evidence in this case and have yet to hand it over to American investigators.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mana ... ch-n810541
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:33 am

Paul Manafort reportedly being investigated for possible money laundering by US attorney's office in New York

David Choi

The US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York is reportedly investigating President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for possible money laundering.
The list of probes against Manafort continues to grow amid special counsel Robert Mueller's own far-reaching investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russian operatives.

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is being investigated for possible money laundering by another federal agency, according to three sources in a Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday.

The US attorney's office in New York's Southern District was reportedly working in conjunction with special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into potential money laundering from Manafort — part of a wider examination into Russia's meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, The Journal reported.

The news of the probe comes amid a Politico report last week that said Trump was interviewing US Attorney candidates to head the attorney offices for New York's Southern District, based in Manhattan, and Eastern District, based in Brooklyn. Trump was considering nominees that reportedly had ties to his associates, including his personal lawyer, The Journal reported.

"I never heard of a president interviewing a US attorney candidate," Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as Bush's chief ethics lawyer, previously told Business Insider.

Manafort has previously denied the money-laundering allegations.

The list of probes into Manafort's affairs continues to grow, as prosecutors who specialize in money-laundering cases have recently been recruited to Mueller's team, and investigators continue to ramp up their investigation into Russia's involvement in the election.
http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-man ... rk-2017-10


Prosecutors move to bust Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner like a piñata
Bill Palmer
Updated: 1:38 am EDT Wed Oct 25, 2017
Home » Opinion

From a prosecutorial standpoint, taking down Donald Trump is no different than taking down a mob boss: you start by pressuring underlings to flip and cut deals, you work your way up the chain, and you end up with ironclad eyewitness testimony against the kingpin. It’s why prosecutors have been placing so much pressure on those who have worked with Trump the most closely. Now there’s a new effort to corner two of the key players.


Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort is already under criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Mueller is looking to force Manafort to flip on Trump, and he’s counting on Schneiderman bringing state-level charges against Manafort which can’t be pardoned by Trump. Now there’s a third flank against Manafort: according to the Wall Street Journal (link), the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York is also going after Manafort, this time on money laundering charges. Why does this matter?


The Assistant U.S. Attorney who is pursuing Manafort, has a background in asset forfeitures. It sounds like he’s looking to use money laundering charges to take Manafort’s money and possessions away – which would leave Manafort unable to pay his legal bills. That would make it all but impossible to go into court with a high priced lawyer and fight the state level charges brought by the New York Attorney General. If Manafort can’t fend off the state level charges, he’ll end up in prison – leaving him no choice but to flip. There is also another key target.


The same Wall Street Journal article reveals that the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn is pursuing a criminal investigation into Jared Kushner’s family business. This also creates a path for pressuring Kushner to flip on Trump. He may be hesitant to flip on his own father-in-law for family reasons no matter how bad it gets for him – but it’s difficult to imagine Manafort refusing to flip if the Feds start taking his money away.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/kus ... rump/5696/
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They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 27, 2017 9:52 pm

Manafort realtor called to testify before grand jury in Russia probe
The realtor, who helped Manafort buy the Alexandria apartment recently raided by the FBI, was called last week by prosecutors working under special counsel Robert Mueller.
By JOSH GERSTEIN 10/27/2017 08:15 PM EDT

The realtor who helped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort buy the Virginia condo that was recently raided by the FBI testified last week before the federal grand jury hearing testimony in Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, POLITICO has learned.

The real estate agent, Wayne Holland of Alexandria, Virginia-based McEnearney Associates, appeared before the Washington-based grand jury after a federal judge rejected the firm’s lawyer’s bid to quash subpoenas for testimony and records about various real estate transactions.

The broker’s appearance before the grand jury is one of few concrete indications of the leads Mueller’s prosecutors are pursuing as they investigate Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election. The investigation encompasses lobbying work done by Manafort as well as possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni was called before the grand jury on Sept. 15, but few other witnesses have been publicly identified.

While property records show Holland represented Manafort in his 2015 condo purchase, the broker declined to say anything about Manafort or about what questions were asked by prosecutors during the testimony last week.

“I cannot talk about what happened in front of the grand jury,” Holland said.

Manafort bought the 2,779 square foot Alexandria condo with Potomac River views in 2015 for $2.7 million, according to property records.

Holland was originally called to testify on Oct. 13, but objected to the subpoenas on the grounds that Virginia and District of Columbia law makes real estate broker records confidential.

However, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell ruled that those confidentiality statutes don’t preclude federal prosecutors from using grand jury subpoenas to demand details of real estate deals.

“The respondents are wrong: the information the grand jury subpoenas seek is not privileged under state or federal law and the government need not make any special showing to obtain these records, nor would production be ‘unreasonable or oppressive,’” Howell wrote in an opinion unsealed Friday. “The language of the District and Columbia statutes...make clear that real estate brokerage records may be produce pursuant to a federal grand jury subpoena without the necessity of an additional court order.”


The public version of the opinion is simply captioned “In re Grand Jury Investigation” and does not name Holland or Manafort. However, the real estate agent confirmed in a brief telephone interview Friday that the legal dispute concerned his testimony.

“The motion was decided and the judge said, ‘No,’” Holland said.

The real estate broker said no appeal was taken and he gave the required testimony last week.

“I did and it is over—I hope,” he said.

Howell’s ruling made no mention of Mueller or his prosecution team, but sheds some light on the scope of the special prosecutor’s investigation. The judge said the subpoenas at issue sought information “regarding the purchase of real property, including in Virginia, by four individuals and their affiliated entities.”

The Alexandria condo was purchased by Paul Manafort and his wife Kathleen. There have also been reports that federal and New York State authorities are investigating real estate deals involving Paul Manafort and other family members, including his son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai.

Mueller’s team is believed to be conducting a wide-ranging investigation into Manafort’s finances, including his income from consulting work in places like Ukraine, where the political party he represented had strong ties to Russia.

Pursuant to a search warrant, the FBI raided Manafort’s apartment around dawn on July 26, seizing papers and computer records. A lawyer for President Donald Trump, John Dowd, described the search as resulting from a “gross abuse of the judicial process,” according to an email obtained by Fox News.

Maloni and Manafort attorney Kevin Downing did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment for this story. It’s unclear whether Manafort’s legal team was aware of the litigation over the real estate records, but the confidentiality laws the broker’s lawyer cited can be waived when the customer consents to release of information.

Howell issued an order compelling Holland’s testimony following a closed-door hearing on Oct. 17. When she issued her opinion on the matter on Monday, she asked government lawyers to advise her if they had any objection to unsealing the opinion with a redaction apparently intended to shield the privacy of the parties involved.

The version of the opinion released Friday doesn’t say how prosecutors responded, but it appears the opinion was made public in the form the judge suggested.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/ ... ler-244261
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Oct 29, 2017 5:56 pm

These 13 Wire Transfers Are A Focus Of The FBI Probe Into Paul Manafort

BuzzFeed News has learned of a series of wire transfers, made by companies linked to Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, that federal officials deemed suspicious. Many of the wires went from offshore companies controlled by Manafort to American businesses.

Posted on Oct 29, 2017, 12:56:42 PM GMT
Jason Leopold
Anthony Cormier

Paul Manafort
The FBI's investigation of Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, includes a keen focus on a series of suspicious wire transfers in which offshore companies linked to Manafort moved more than $3 million all over the globe between 2012 and 2013.

Much of the money came into the United States.

These transactions — which have not been previously reported — drew the attention of federal law enforcement officials as far back as 2012, when they began to examine wire transfers to determine if Manafort hid money from tax authorities or helped the Ukrainian regime close to Russian President Vladimir Putin launder some of the millions it plundered through corrupt dealings.

The new revelations come as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is tightening, with reports that an indictment may already have been issued. It is not known if Manafort has been charged, or if he ever will be. Manafort has been the subject of multiple law enforcement and congressional inquiries. A spokesperson for Manafort would not comment for this story about the investigation or any of the specific transactions, but Manafort has previously denied wrongdoing.

Manafort took charge of Trump’s campaign in May 2016 and was forced to resign just three months later, amid intense media scrutiny of his ties to the notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was supported by the Kremlin. A political operative for decades, the 68-year-old Manafort has worked for Republicans such as presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as for foreign leaders such as former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos.

He has emerged as a central figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, in part because of Manafort’s many ties to prominent Russians and his work with Yanukovych. Manafort is reportedly also being investigated for money laundering by federal prosecutors in New York City, but there have been no formal charges from that probe. The FBI searched his home during a predawn raid this summer, reportedly as part of Mueller’s probe. Manafort has consistently maintained his innocence.

Now, BuzzFeed News has learned that investigators have been scrutinizing at least 13 wire transfers between 2012 and 2013. The transfers were first flagged by US financial institutions, which are required by law to tell an office within the Treasury Department about any transactions they deem suspicious. Such “suspicious activity reports” do not prove wrongdoing. Federal law requires financial institutions to file reports on cash transactions that exceed $10,000 in a single day, even if those transactions seem otherwise legitimate. Banks are also required to file the reports whenever they suspect money laundering or other financial crimes.

Bank officers flagged unusual behavior among five offshore companies that authorities say are associated with Manafort: Global Endeavour Inc., Lucicle Consultants Ltd., and three others that appear to have no current contact information.

Law enforcement sources say the companies sent funds in round-dollar amounts without explanation of what the money was to be used for. The countries where these transactions originated — notably Cyprus and the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines — are notorious for money laundering. Federal law enforcement officials said they saw evidence of “layering,” the process by which the origin of money is obscured behind many layers of companies. Much of the money ended up in the US, sent to home improvement contractors, a hedge fund, and even a car dealership.

Manafort’s suspicious financial transactions were first flagged by Treasury officials as far back as 2012 and forwarded to the FBI’s International Corruption Unit and the Department of Justice for further investigation in 2013 and 2014, a former Treasury official who worked on the matter told BuzzFeed News. The extent of Manafort’s suspicious transactions was so vast, said this former official, that law enforcement agents drafted a series of “intelligence reports” about Manafort’s financial dealings. Two law enforcement officials who worked on the case say that they found red flags in his banking records going back as far as 2004, and that the transactions in question totaled many millions of dollars.

It’s unknown what became of the FBI’s Manafort investigation; no charges were filed. An FBI spokesperson did not return emails and phone calls this week. One FBI agent who was actively involved in the investigation told BuzzFeed News it “lay dormant” for a while but was never closed.

Then, last January, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched its probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. In April, the committee sent the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, a letter requesting a wide range of financial records “related to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election or individuals associated with it.” Specifically, the committee asked FinCEN officials for “any actions” they took to support law enforcement or intelligence inquiries; any documents they sent to the FBI; and any requests for information they sent to banks. Details of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request have not been previously disclosed.

While searching for records to turn over to lawmakers, the former Treasury official said, FinCEN found its previous reports on Manafort and sent them again to the FBI International Corruption Unit, whose agents were working with Mueller on his investigation. According to a congressional source, this May FinCEN sent the Senate committee financial records covering a six-year time frame on Manafort — January 2011 through May 2017. In June, FinCEN also sent financial records on Manafort to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which is conducting a separate probe on Russian interference. That committee also sought a wide range of suspicious activity records on Manafort and his wife, Kathleen, among other individuals and businesses. Manafort’s spokesperson declined to comment on what FinCEN sent the congressional committees about the Manaforts.

BuzzFeed News has learned specific details about 13 of the wire transfers, all of which took place between 2012 and 2013. At least four of the transfers originated with Manafort’s company Global Endeavour, a political consulting firm based in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Global Endeavour was hired by Yanukovych to consult and lobby on his behalf. Ousted after the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution, Yanukovych lives in exile in Russia and is accused of treason by Ukrainian authorities; the country’s general prosecutor said Yanukovych’s embezzlement of state funds was so egregious it resembled a “mafia structure.”

Wire transfers flagged as suspicious show that during the waning months of Yanukovych’s presidency, Global Endeavour sent more than $750,000 out of Ukraine. None of these transactions have been previously reported.

In November and December of 2013, for example, the company transferred almost $53,000 to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Kiev-based political operator. It’s not known what the money was for. A federal law enforcement official described Kilimnik as a linguist trained by the Russian army and about whom the US has gathered intelligence. He reportedly attended a military school some experts believe to be a training ground for Russian spies.

Kilimnik worked with Manafort for more than a decade, and the Washington Post reported that Manafort emailed his old partner in 2016 to offer “private briefings” to a Russian billionaire close to President Vladimir Putin.

Kilimnik declined to comment when reached Saturday by BuzzFeed News.

In September 2013, Global Endeavour transferred $500,000 that would ultimately end up back in Manafort’s control. First it went to a hedge fund in Florida, Aegis Holdings LLC, that is controlled by Marc Baldinger, a broker who in 2014 was suspended for 18 months for engaging in deals his financial institution didn’t know about. Baldinger’s brother, Bruce, is a real estate attorney who has worked with Manafort for about a decade.

The day after Aegis Holdings received the $500,000, it transferred the same amount to a securities clearinghouse, which ultimately sent the funds to Lilred LLC in Morristown, New Jersey. Lilred is run out of a brick office park. Business records show its manager is Manafort; its registered agent is Bruce Baldinger. Marc Baldinger told bank officials the money was a regular investment contribution from Manafort.

Neither Baldinger brother returned multiple phone calls or emails for comment.

Also in late 2013, Global Endeavour sent out $200,000 to a remodeling company in Long Island, SP&C Home Improvement. Stephen Jacobsen, a representative, told bank officials the funds were an advance on a remodeling project.

That project, at 377 Union Street in Brooklyn, has been the subject of media reports. The brownstone in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood first belonged to a company controlled by Manafort and his son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism is investigating Yohai and requested from FinCEN in June any suspicious financial transactions in which he is named, according to a copy of a letter reviewed by BuzzFeed News. He declined to comment.

SP&C, the remodeling company that received a wire transfer from Global Endeavour, was the first company to submit a permit to turn the three-story building into a single-family home. SP&C’s representative, Colleen Jacobsen, estimated the work would cost about $300,000, according to city records.

Stephen and Colleen Jacobsen did not return multiple phone calls, but he told bank officials that the money was a payment for a large construction project.

Four years later, the project is still unfinished. Last week workers from a concrete company — not SP&C — were seen at the home. An architect newly hired to work on the building said it was about 65% finished.

In addition to transactions involving Global Endeavour, there were wire transfers, never before reported, flagged as suspicious involving other companies. There were three by the Cyprus-based Lucicle Consultants — which has “strong ties” to Manafort, according to federal law enforcement sources — in March and April 2012. The company transferred a total of about $2.5 million, some of it directly to accounts controlled by Manafort. No contact information for Lucicle or any of its officers could be found.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/jasonl ... cious-wire
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 30, 2017 7:58 am

BOOM

Manafort and Gates each face 12 charges including CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE UNITED STATES


page 16 of the indictment.....cover up


Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir V. Putin

Behold the power of FINCEN. Dear @realDonaldTrump: Mueller has your taxes.

"Really excited for the Hillary Clinton and Podesta indictments today over Pizzagate." :roll:

oh Morty where are you? You owe me a new mouse :D

How many soft-handed 68 year old errand boys for Russian oligarchs really do well in Federal prison?

Image

This is consistent with an early indictment to get Manafort to flip.

IT IS PAUL MANAFORT AND GATES


NYT

MANAFORT AND GATES TOLD TO SURRENDER

THE CHAIR OF THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN ...GATES REMAINED ON TRUMP CAMAPAIGN AFTER MANAFORT LEFT


It's Manafort. Trump Campaign Chairman, unregistered foreign agent, and resident of Trump Tower, Paul Manafort.


Gates was still hanging out in the White House in March

Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Told to Surrender

Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Told to Surrender
By MATT APUZZOOCT. 30, 2017
Image
Paul Manafort, President Trump’s campaign chairman, at the Republican National Convention in July. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort and his former business associate Rick Gates were told to surrender to federal authorities Monday morning, the first charges in a special counsel investigation, according to a person involved in the case.

The charges against Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Mr. Gates, a business associate of Mr. Manafort, were not immediately clear but represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over the president’s first year in office.

Mr. Gates is a longtime protégé and junior partner of Mr. Manafort. His name appears on documents linked to companies that Mr. Manafort’s firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe, records reviewed by The New York Times show.

Mr. Manafort had been under investigation for violations of federal tax law, money laundering and whether he appropriately disclosed his foreign lobbying.

Attempts to reach Mr. Gates on Monday were not successful. A spokesman for Mr. Manafort did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/p ... icted.html


Image

Manafort has been under investigation since Sept 2016

and I had been posting about him almost the whole 2016 year at another website that banned me in July because they just couldn't allow me to continue..thank you RI for allowing me to express my opinions

Image

Manafort Surrenders To Face Charges In Mueller Probe

Image
By NICOLE LAFOND Published OCTOBER 30, 2017 8:11 AM
President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort surrendered to the FBI Monday, a seminal moment in the sprawling Russia probe that was captured live by the cable news networks.

Manafort’s appearance entering the FBI field office in downtown Washington, D.C. just after 8 a.m. ET, followed the first charges from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Times reported Monday.

The charges — which were unsealed Monday — include 12 counts of conspiracy against the U.S., conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) statements, false statements and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, according to a Mueller spokesperson.

One of Manfort’s business associates, Rick Gates, also turned himself in Monday, according to CNN. The pair were indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday. Gates is linked to Manafort’s business dealings with politicians and corporations in Eastern Europe.

The special counsel has taken a broad approach to its probe into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller has been investigating Manafort for months, looking at Manafort’s foreign business dealings and whether he properly disclosed his foreign lobbying. Manafort has previously denied financial wrongdoings in his various real estate dealings and use of offshore tax shelters. He came under scrutiny and was fired from the Trump campaign for a $12 million payment the Ukrainian president sent Manafort.

The former campaign chairman is the first person to be charged in the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the election. Mueller and his team of prosecutors have taken interest in the Trump campaign, as well as the financial transactions of members of Trump’s team.

The FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid at Manafort’s home in Virginia in July, taking financial and tax documents.

Watch the clip of Manafort arriving at the FBI field house on Monday morning, via CNN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... NWkQ-wm22o

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/m ... -surrender


HOW TO INTERPRET ROBERT MUELLER’S CHARGES AGAINST PAUL MANAFORT


Former FBI director Robert MuellerANDREW HARNIK/AP
WITH PUBLIC CRIMINAL charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort announced Monday morning, this year’s biggest political story—the former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election—will enter an important new phase, guided not just by whispers and Twitter wars but by written indictments and the rules of federal evidence.
The indictment targeting Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates—itself a political bombshell—is likely to be merely the first step in a potentially long investigation. Details from the indictment—and other emerging public court documents—will immediately help to shed further light on the tangle of relationships that Manafort and others had with various Russian and Ukrainian contacts in recent years, but there are plenty more investigative avenues that Mueller appears to be following, some far removed from Manafort's orbit.

Manafort faces a long list of charges that includes conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, false statements, acting as an unregistered agent as a foreign principal, making misleading statements in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and seven counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. That's a dozen in all. Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos also pleaded guilty to making false statements, accompanied by a bombshell plea agreement that includes several key details about Russia's alleged attempts to reach out to the Trump campaign.
Here are five rules of federal investigations to keep in mind as you read about the new charges and think about their implications:

1) The FBI takes down whole organizations. The charges announced Monday in Mueller’s investigation are almost assuredly only a first step in what could be an very long and extensive grand jury investigation.
Only rarely does the FBI end up charging a single individual; it’s simply not worth the time and resources of the federal government to go after individuals in cases outside of rare instances, like say, terrorism. Institutionally, the FBI’s modus operandi and DNA is to target and dismantle entire whole criminal organizations—that’s why federal cases usually take so long: The agency starts at the bottom or periphery of an organization and works inward, layer by layer, until it’s in a position to build a rock-solid case against the person at the top.

This investigative method has been the heart of the FBI’s approach since the 1980s, when it and the Justice Department—led by an era of aggressive and brilliant prosecutors like Louis Freeh, Rudolph Giuliani, and Michael Chertoff—began to attack La Cosa Nostra in New York. The FBI relied then on a then-new tool, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, to attack and dismantle entire mafia families, charging dozens or scores of suspects in a single case.

The approach, then and now, has been almost always been similar: Work on peripheral figures first, encourage them to cooperate with the government against their bosses in exchange for a lighter sentence, and then repeat the process until the circle has closed tightly around the godfather or criminal mastermind. There’s no reason to think that this investigation will be any different.

In fact, members of Mueller’s investigative team cut their teeth on a who’s who of the biggest Justice Department targets of the last quarter century, taking that “organization” approach to cases like Enron (prosecutor Andrew Weissmann led the task force), al-Qaeda (aide Aaron Zebley helped investigate the 1998 embassy bombings before 9/11), and organized crime (prosecutor Greg Andres helped investigate the Bonnano family in New York, as well as the $8 billion Ponzi scheme led by Texan financier Robert Allen Stanford, who’s now serving a 110-year prison sentence).
Weissmann—who was spotted Friday outside the grand jury room—is considered an expert on “flipping witnesses,” encouraging people to testify against their colleagues. In the 1990s, he led the case against mobster Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, from the Genovese crime family, with the help of turncoat witnesses.

2) Don’t hold your breath for “collusion.” For all the talk of Russian collusion, there isn’t really a federal crime that matches what the press, critics, and Capitol Hill lawmakers have been calling collusion, a word that refers legally to a narrow segment of antitrust law. And there’s almost zero chance anyone will be charged with treason, a charge that’s only available to use against enemies in a declared war.
Instead, nearly all charges that stem from this case—based, at least on publicly available tea leaves—are likely to focus on targeting individual crimes reflecting aspects of the complex web of Russian influence in 2016, rather than a neatly-tied-up-with-a-bow conspiracy. Early rounds of charges may even likely focus on business dealings far removed from the questions of the 2016 election.

Expect to see garden-variety white-collar crimes—charges like money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, and “structuring,” (arranging financial transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements)—as well as the possibility of some more exotic charges like violating the nation’s election laws or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or there’s a general catch-all known as 18 USC Sec. 371, “conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States.”

There’s also the crime of being an unregistered foreign agent—a charge known inside the Justice Department as a “FARA violation,” after the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A FARA violation is typically the FBI’s go-to way to charge espionage and foreign intelligence officers—the cases are rare and only a few agents in their careers ever have a chance to work a FARA case—but we’ve already seen Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn retroactively register as “foreign agents” this year, showing that they have some legal exposure in this realm.

As the case unfolds, there will almost assuredly also be charges that, in many ways, form the foundation of many federal cases: obstruction of justice, perjury, or lying to federal agents (a.k.a. “making false statements”). These charges are particularly common in special counsel-type investigations—and can end up targeting people unrelated to the original criminal act. During Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s name, for example, it was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who ended up in the hot seat for obstruction and perjury. Similarly, Marine General James Cartwright was charged with lying to federal investigators as part of the investigation into the Stuxnet leak. These charges—perjury, obstruction, false statements—are often used as leverage to seek a witness’s cooperation (see No. 4).

This approach and the reality of federal criminal law means that the full picture of what happened in 2016—and even before—is likely still years away from being understood.

3) There are many threads, including some likely unrelated to others. Based on what we know so far, it appears that Russia’s information operation against the 2016 presidential election might have been less of a top-down conspiracy and more of an opportunistic case of many different arms of the Russian octopus—the strange mix of politicians, intelligence officers, oligarchs, criminals, and professionals who surround the Kremlin—working to exploit every potential opportunity.
Just in the last week, we’ve seen how expansive the Mueller investigation might be inside the nondescript Washington, D.C., office where his team has been assembling evidence for months. He’s evidently covering not just the Trump Tower meeting (coordinated with the Kremlin?), but digging into Paul Manafort’s finances (his realtor testified before the grand jury last week), looking at Michael Flynn’s work with Turkey, and the social media advertising and targeting that went on as well. Add in the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email, which had already been the subject of an FBI investigation before the election even unfolded—and which might represent an entirely separate Russia nexus through Wikileaks—or what we’ve now learned about the attempted penetration of state-level voting machines, and it’s clear that this case will evolve for many months to come. And all of those individual cases or investigative avenues might prove ultimately unrelated to the Big Question: Did President Trump attempt to obstruct justice with his firing of FBI Director James Comey?
4) The first charges are only a starting point—but don’t necessarily wait for the dramatic Perry Mason-style trial. The indictments handed down by a grand jury that lead to a target’s arrest are rarely the charges the target ultimately faces in a courtroom. Federal prosecutions—particularly complex, still unfolding ones like Mueller’s—often go through many legal iterations, with so-called “superseding indictments” either adding additional charges down the road as more information becomes known or, as trial nears, dropping ancillary charges in order to zero in on the most potent and provable ones.
However, as much as Law and Order may have taught us otherwise, very very few cases go to trial—generally more than 90 percent of federal cases are settled via a plea bargain. That’s in part because the government is heavily incentivized to take the bird-in-hand of a lesser charge for a guaranteed success, but also because the government has tremendous leverage in a criminal negotiation, from the length and location of a prison sentence (much better to be in the low- security FCI Danbury prison in Connecticut than it is to be in the high- security FCI Terre Haute in Indiana) to what assets the government might try to seize (think: “Nice house your family lives in—shame if something happened it”) to what the impact of a unfolding case might be on family members. (You have an aunt who overstayed her visa? Maybe the government promises to overlook that. Your son or wife was also in on the scheme? Maybe you plead guilty right now to a heftier charge to stop the investigation of your family.) Weissmann used this tool to effect in the Enron trial, leveraging the charges against former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow and his wife to encourage Fastow to testify against Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.
Pay particular attention if you start seeing Mueller’s team filing not criminal indictments but “criminal informations,” which are effectively criminal charges done with the cooperation of the target: That means the suspect is cooperating with prosecutors and has likely worked out a deal to provide testimony or evidence against others, or has negotiated the charges in advance and intends to plead guilty quickly.

It’s clear, too, that Mueller is coming at this investigation with an even broader lens: One of the Justice Department veterans he recruited to the team, Michael Dreeben, is known for being the government’s smartest mind on appellate cases—that is, how a case will play out down the road on appeal—and he’s argued 100 cases before the Supreme Court, putting him in a rare class of lawyer who can meld not just the evidence necessary for a trial but also the legal theory and jurisprudence necessary to sustain that case through years and rounds of appeals. There are signs, too, that Mueller is even thinking through how presidential pardons might shape his case.
5) Bob Mueller is after federal crimes, not political problems. It’s important to understand that the task before Mueller’s team of FBI agents and prosecutors isn’t to investigate and make public the full truth of the 2016 election. They have a much more narrow task: To determine whether there are definable criminal violations that amount to federal felonies or misdemeanors and that can be proven in a courtroom beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the federal government’s standard rules of evidence and criminal procedure.
Sally Q. Yates—the acting attorney general fired by President Trump for refusing to implement the so-called Muslim ban—has argued since leaving office that Mueller’s standard should not be the nation’s only test of what happened in 2016. There are any number of behaviors and actions that might fall short of a definable, provable felony that we, as a democratic society and a sovereign nation that eschews foreign involvement in our politics, might find troubling behavior in our commander-in-chief and the leader of one branch of government. But it’s not entirely clear right now how the country might see such behavior or act upon it.

How, if Mueller uncovers such behavior, it remains an open question how he might convey this information to the public and political process. He might write a formal report, akin to what Ken Starr did during his probe into the Monica Lewinsky affair during the Clinton years or what the 9/11 Commission did following its investigation, and turn that over to the Justice Department to present to Congress. Or he might not. When Mueller, working in private practice after his stint as FBI director, was tasked with investigating the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case, he defined his mission as narrowly as possible—examining only the NFL’s handling of a video showing the original assault, rather than getting into the larger questions of, say, whether the League coddles abusers.

This latter category of “political problems” ultimately ends up being the purview of Congress—and it will be almost inseparable from the conversation of whatever criminal charges and information stems from Mueller’s investigation. At each stage, we will see debates in the media and political circles: Are there political high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant action via presidential impeachment? Unfortunately, the Capitol Hill investigations have had a difficult road this year, and there seems little appetite for bipartisan action and a forthright debate about the 2016 election. The House investigation by the Intelligence Committee was quickly undermined by bizarre behavior by chair Devin Nunes and now even the Senate investigation, which at least kept up the appearance of a bipartisan effort, appears to be faltering.
Which is a long roundabout way of saying: Monday’s charges are only the beginning of what’s sure to be a complex and deeply partisan process. And, if this weekend’s release of half-century-old files related to JFK’s assassination is any guide, we, as a country, may never feel like we fully understand what transpired in 2016.

This post has been updated to reflect that the Mueller team's first charges were brought against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-inte ... nsiteshare
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:46 pm

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his former business associate Rick Gates pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of conspiracy against the United States and money laundering in connection with Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the election. Manafort's bail was set at $10 million, or roughly 10 times his spending on antique rugs. Gates' bail was set at $5 million. Both men were placed under house arrest.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... eller.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 31, 2017 5:16 am

Manafort was 1st president’s former campaign chief indicted since John N. Mitchell during Watergate


July 26 - FBI agents "no-knock" raid of Manafort's home

July 27 - Papadopoulos arrested upon arrival at Dulles


He talked to EVERYONE!

Everyone in the WH is trying to remember speaking to #GeorgePapadopoulos and what they said to him

Mueller knows EVERYTHING!

Manafort protege Rick Gates worked in Ukraine, made his way into Trump campaign’s inner circle
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3599032


October 30, 2017/16 Comments/in Mueller Probe /by empty wheel

There is now some debate about what this footnote, from George Papadopoulos’ plea, means.

On or about May 21, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS emailed another high-ranking Campaign official, with the subject line “Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump.” The email included the May 4 MFA Email and added: “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to discuss.”2

2 The government notes that the official forwarded defendant PAPADOPOULOS’s email to another Campaign official (without including defendant PAPADOPOULOS) and stated:

“Let[‘]s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

The question is, does this mean the speaker was trying to agree to meetings, but keep it low level to hide the intent to cooperate with Russia, or send a low level person to reject the meeting.

As southpaw has noted, this exchange was actually included in a WaPo post this summer claiming that Papadopoulos was ignored by the campaign. The two campaign officials involved are … Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, who were surely shocked to learn Papadopoulos had flipped on them three weeks ago as they pled not guilty today.

Several weeks later, Papadopoulos forwarded the same message from Timofeev to Manafort, the newly named campaign chairman.

“Russia has been eager to meet with Mr. Trump for some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss,” the adviser told Manafort.

Manafort reacted coolly, forwarding the email to his associate Rick Gates, with a note: “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips.”

Gates agreed and told Manafort he would ask the campaign’s correspondence coordinator to handle it — “the person responding to all mail of non-importance” — to signify this did not need a senior official to respond.

Already, it’s clear that whoever shared this content with WaPo was spinning, hiding the context.

But the complaint against Papadopoulos written to support an arrest this July says something different. It shows that on July 14, Papadopoulos wrote Timofeev proposing an August or September meeting in the UK.

On or about July 14, 2016, PAPADOPOULOS emailed Foreign Contact 2 and proposed a “meeting for August or September in the UK (London) with me and my national chairman, and maybe one other foreign policy advisor and you, members of president putin’s office and the mfa to hold a day of consultants and to meet one another. It has been approved from our side.”

That is, less than two months later, Papadopoulous at least claimed that a meeting including Manafort had been approved, though not including Trump.

Mind you, back to the plea, by August 15 it was decided just Papadopoulous and an unnamed “another foreign policy advisor to the Campaign” should “make the trip[], if it is feasible.” But it then says that the meeting did not take place.

That’s likely not because at that time, August 15, Manafort was being ousted from the campaign because his corrupt ties to Ukraine (basically, the stuff he got indicted on today) was causing a scandal. Which is to say that particular meeting didn’t happen (though Papadopoulos remained on the campaign and — in Facebook messaging he tried to destroy after meeting with the FBI — remained in contact with his Russian handlers as late as October 1), but it didn’t happen not because Manafort wasn’t game, but because Manafort’s ties to Russia became toxic, precisely the kind of “signal” Manafort was trying to avoid in May.

And the connotation of that May 21 email is important because it shows Manafort’s mindset in the weeks before, on June 9, he met with a Russian lawyer hoping for dirt he likely expected to include stolen Hillary emails.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/10/30/t ... to-russia/



Paul Manafort Rented Out His Money-Laundering New York Apartment on Airbnb, Indictment Says
By Henry Grabar
OCT. 30, 2017, 11:57 AM
Some SoHo buildings
The SoHo neighborhood, famous for its cast-iron architecture and money laundering.
Flickr/La Citta Vitta
Among the purchases former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort made with his Cypriot bank accounts were two New York City properties, a $3 million Brooklyn brownstone and a $2.9 million SoHo loft, according to the federal indictment unsealed on Monday.

In each case, according to the indictment, he lied to lenders on subsequent applications for mortgages and construction loans. In the case of the SoHo property, he told the bank the apartment was the home of his daughter and son-in-law, when he was in fact renting it out on Airbnb for several thousand dollars a week. Manafort allegedly used renovations on the Brooklyn home to take out a $5 million construction loan, which he then spent paying off a mortgage for a different property and a down payment on a third. In March, WNYC reported he had $6.8 million in loans against the Brooklyn building, which was valued by Zillow at just $4.5 to 5 million.


This is not the first time Manafort’s New York holdings have drawn attention from the media and law enforcement. Various news outlets have covered these purchases and others—a condo in the Trump SoHo among them—and the New York Post reported in March 2016 that Manafort’s properties had drawn a probe from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. (Schneiderman wound up working with special counsel Robert Mueller on this investigation.)

At the time, investigating the purchase of the Union Street building and its languishing renovations, the Post pointed out how curious it was that Manafort would buy yet another New York home for his daughter, Jessica, and her husband, real estate investor Jeff Yohai, “since he had just bought the [SoHo] property for Jess and Yohai to live in earlier that year.” The indictment goes some way to explaining that: Manafort’s daughter and Yohai seem never to have lived in the SoHo apartment.


The Treasury Department has warned that all-cash purchases can signal that luxury residential property is being used for money laundering, and watchdogs in New York in particular have worried about the billions of dollars spent on high-value properties in the city each year. Still, it’s hard to uncover buyers’ identities and harder still to prove anything beyond insinuation about the origins of the money. (Manafort’s role was known, if the nature of his cash transfers and loan applications were not.)

The curious thing is why, after allegedly laundering more than $17 million from foreign bank accounts to fund a “lavish lifestyle” in the United States, Manafort decided to list the SoHo apartment on Airbnb—a move that, unlike all-cash purchases of multiple luxury properties, was explicitly illegal (though widely tolerated) in New York. The guy seems to have had $934,000 to spend on rugs! Did he really need another couple grand from tourists looking for a place to crash? Not even mega-rich operatives are immune to the siren’s call of making an extra buck through illegal short-term rentals.
https://slate.com/business/2017/10/indi ... irbnb.html


Where in Beverly Hills did Paul Manafort spend $500,000 on suits?
http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html



The Tax Havens at the Heart of the Manafort Indictment
Cyprus, Seychelles, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have long been criticized for their banking regulations.

A general view of the Seychelles
Seychelles, an island paradise and tax havenGetty via Corbis Historical

KRISHNADEV CALAMUR OCT 30, 2017 GLOBAL


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Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Richard Gates, Manafort’s business partner, are alleged by an indictment to have, among other things, laundered money through shell companies and foreign bank accounts in Cyprus, Seychelles, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. (Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges in the indictment, which include money laundering.)

In all, the indictment says, $75 million flowed through these accounts, and they funded Manafort and Gates’s lifestyles in the U.S. The indictment emerged from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

A shell company is a legal entity that, as Casey Michael wrote in The Atlantic in July, exists “solely for the purpose of masking ownership of wealth, property, and other assets, serve as a middleman of sorts, helping those behind them move funds from one place to another.” Setting up shell companies, as Manafort and Gates are alleged to have done, isn’t necessarily illegal—nor are they difficult to set up. When it does became illegal, however, is when shell companies are used to evade taxes and launder money—which Manafort and Gates are alleged to have done. Having a foreign bank account isn’t illegal, either. But U.S. citizens with foreign bank accounts with more than $10,000 at the start of the year they are filing taxes must, under U.S. law, report those accounts to the U.S. Treasury. They must also declare any foreign accounts to the Internal Revenue Service while doing their taxes. Manafort and Gates are alleged to have done neither.


What they are alleged to have done is operate shell companies and bank accounts in Cyprus, the Indian Ocean nation of Seychelles, and the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Until recently—some would argue today, too— Cyprus was a favored destination as a tax haven, the term used to describe countries that offer foreign businesses little or no tax liability. Seychelles and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are smaller, but are popular destinations for offshore funds.

There is no fixed definition of what constitutes a tax haven. The International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the club of the world's richest countries, maintain their own lists of such countries using differing methodologies. Both lists have been criticized as politicized. The European Union maintains a black list of tax havens based upon lists maintained by its individual member states. Then there are the lists maintained by organizations like Oxfam, the charity group, and the Tax Justice Network, which specializes in the study of overseas tax havens.

Cyprus, Seychelles, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines feature in some of the multilateral and national lists, as well as the independent lists.

Oxfam included Cyprus in its list of the “world's worst corporate tax havens.” The Tax Justice Network’s financial-secrecy index pointed out that Cyprus does not “require that company ownership details are publicly available online” or that “company accounts be available on public record.” This makes Cyprus an attractive destination for those who want to conceal their identities, and even the fact that a given company exists at all. Cyprus’s laws also don’t require companies on its territory to tell Cypriot tax authorities about payments to non-Cypriots.


Manafort’s financial links to Cyprus were documented earlier this year by The New York Times in a story that referred to Cyprus as a “secretive tax haven.” That label prompted Nicosia’s ambassador to the U.S. to write the newspaper complaining about the “accusatory tone” of its coverage. But Cyprus has long been linked to money-laundering, especially Russian money laundering: Members of the European Parliament urged the country this week to investigate alleged Russian money laundering through banks in Cyprus. Cyprus denies such activities occur, citing the overhaul of its financial system in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that resulted in its banks needing a bailout that was ultimately provided by the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Union.

Seychelles, meanwhile, was labeled a “corruption-haunted archipelago” that is “an offshore magnet for money launderers and tax dodgers” in a 2014 report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The country is far more secretive than Cyprus, according to the Tax Justice Network, allows “harmful legal vehicles,” and lacks laws that discourage foreign tax evasion. Seychelles was among the favorite places where shell companies were set up by Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers leaks.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines might be small, but it’s far more secretive than either the Seychelles or Cyprus—with various tax and income loopholes that foreigners can employ to avoid paying taxes in their own countries. The Caribbean nation was on a EU black list of states that are insufficiently cooperative with the bloc's financial regulators.

All three countries are among 24 nations that received far more foreign capital than countries of their size typically do. This list was devised by researchers at the University of Amsterdam who pointed out that what makes these countries retain foreign investment is, in part, some lax rules governing corporations, banks, or both.

It is regulations like those, combined with little to no corporate taxes, that allow tax havens to thrive. Gabriel Zucman, the author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, estimates that $7.6 trillion is stashed in tax havens around the world. That accounts for about 8 percent of the world’s personal financial wealth. This hidden money, he argues, amounts to about an additional $200 million in global tax revenue each year. But as my colleague Uri Friedman previously reported: “Other experts claim that the amount of private offshore wealth may be two to four times as high as Zucman’s figure of $7.6 trillion. Needless to say, measuring the size of an industry whose purpose, in part, is to obscure its size isn’t easy or precise.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ns/544394/


HOW TO INTERPRET ROBERT MUELLER’S CHARGES AGAINST PAUL MANAFORT


Former FBI director Robert MuellerANDREW HARNIK/AP
WITH PUBLIC CRIMINAL charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort announced Monday morning, this year’s biggest political story—the former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election—enters an important new phase, guided not just by whispers and Twitter wars but by written indictments and the rules of federal evidence.
The indictment targeting Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates—itself a political bombshell—is likely to be merely the first step in a potentially long investigation. Details from the indictment—and other emerging public court documents—will immediately help to shed further light on the tangle of relationships that Manafort and others had with various Russian and Ukrainian contacts in recent years, but there are plenty more investigative avenues that Mueller appears to be following, some far removed from Manafort's orbit.

Manafort faces a long list of charges that includes conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, false statements, acting as an unregistered agent as a foreign principal, making misleading statements in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and seven counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. That's a dozen in all. Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos also pleaded guilty to making false statements, accompanied by a bombshell plea agreement that includes several key details about Russia's alleged attempts to reach out to the Trump campaign.
Here are five rules of federal investigations to keep in mind as you read about the new charges and think about their implications:

1) The FBI takes down whole organizations. The charges announced Monday in Mueller’s investigation are almost assuredly only a first step in what could be an very long and extensive grand jury investigation.
Only rarely does the FBI end up charging a single individual; it’s simply not worth the time and resources of the federal government to go after individuals in cases outside of rare instances, like say, terrorism. Institutionally, the FBI’s modus operandi and DNA is to target and dismantle entire whole criminal organizations—that’s why federal cases usually take so long: The agency starts at the bottom or periphery of an organization and works inward, layer by layer, until it’s in a position to build a rock-solid case against the person at the top.

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This investigative method has been the heart of the FBI’s approach since the 1980s, when it and the Justice Department—led by an era of aggressive and brilliant prosecutors like Louis Freeh, Rudolph Giuliani, and Michael Chertoff—began to attack La Cosa Nostra in New York. The FBI relied then on a then-new tool, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, to attack and dismantle entire mafia families, charging dozens of suspects in a single case.

The approach, then and now, has almost always been similar: Work on peripheral figures first, encourage them to cooperate with the government against their bosses in exchange for a lighter sentence, and then repeat the process until the circle has closed tightly around the godfather or criminal mastermind. There’s no reason to think that this investigation will be any different.

In fact, members of Mueller’s investigative team cut their teeth on a who’s who of the biggest Justice Department targets of the last quarter century, taking that “organization” approach to cases like Enron (prosecutor Andrew Weissmann led the task force), al-Qaeda (aide Aaron Zebley helped investigate the 1998 embassy bombings before 9/11), and organized crime (prosecutor Greg Andres helped investigate the Bonnano family in New York, as well as the $8 billion Ponzi scheme led by Texan financier Robert Allen Stanford, who’s now serving a 110-year prison sentence).
Weissmann—who was spotted Friday outside the grand jury room—is considered an expert on "flipping" witnesses, encouraging people to testify against their colleagues. In the 1990s, he led the case against mobster Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, from the Genovese crime family, with the help of turncoat witnesses.

2) Don’t hold your breath for “collusion.” For all the talk of Russian collusion, there isn’t really a federal crime that matches what the press, critics, and Capitol Hill lawmakers have been calling collusion, a word that refers legally to a narrow segment of antitrust law. And there’s almost zero chance anyone will be charged with treason, a charge that’s available to use only against enemies in a declared war.
Instead, nearly all charges that stem from this case—at least based on publicly available tea leaves—are likely to focus on targeting individual crimes reflecting aspects of the complex web of Russian influence in 2016 rather than a neatly-tied-up-with-a-bow conspiracy. Early rounds of charges may even focus on business dealings far removed from the questions of the 2016 election.

Expect to see garden-variety white-collar crimes—charges like money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, and “structuring,” (arranging financial transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements)—as well as the possibility of some more exotic charges like violating the nation’s election laws or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or there’s a general catch-all known as 18 USC Sec. 371, “conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States.”


There’s also the crime of being an unregistered foreign agent—a charge known inside the Justice Department as a FARA violation, after the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A FARA violation is typically the FBI’s go-to way to charge espionage and foreign intelligence officers—the cases are rare, and only a few agents in their careers ever have a chance to work a FARA case—but we’ve already seen Manafort and Michael Flynn retroactively register as foreign agents this year, showing that they have some legal exposure in this realm.

As the case unfolds, there will almost assuredly be charges that, in many ways, form the foundation of many federal cases: obstruction of justice, perjury, or lying to federal agents (a k a “making false statements”). These charges are particularly common in special counsel–type investigations and can end up targeting people unrelated to the original criminal act. During Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s name, for example, it was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who ended up in the hot seat for obstruction and perjury. Similarly, Marine General James Cartwright was charged with lying to federal investigators as part of the investigation into the Stuxnet leak. These charges—perjury, obstruction, false statements—are often used as leverage to seek a witness’s cooperation (see No. 4).

This approach and the reality of federal criminal law means that the full picture of what happened in 2016—and even before—is likely still years away from being understood.

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3) There are many threads, including some likely unrelated to others. Based on what we know so far, it appears that Russia’s information operation against the 2016 presidential election might have been less of a top-down conspiracy and more of an opportunistic case of many different arms of the Russian octopus—the strange mix of politicians, intelligence officers, oligarchs, criminals, and professionals who surround the Kremlin—working to exploit every potential opportunity.
Just in the last week, we’ve seen how expansive the Mueller investigation might be inside the nondescript Washington office where his team has been assembling evidence for months. He’s evidently covering not just the Trump Tower meeting (coordinated with the Kremlin?), but digging into Manafort’s finances (his realtor testified before the grand jury last week), looking at Flynn’s work with Turkey, and the social media advertising and targeting that went on as well. Add in the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email, which had already been the subject of an FBI investigation before the election—and which might represent an entirely separate Russia nexus through Wikileaks—or what we’ve now learned about the attempted penetration of state-level voting machines, and it’s clear that this case will evolve for many months to come. And all of those individual cases or investigative avenues might prove ultimately unrelated to the Big Question: Did President Trump attempt to obstruct justice with his firing of FBI Director James Comey?
4) The first charges are only a starting point—but don’t necessarily wait for the dramatic Perry Mason–style trial. The indictments handed down by a grand jury that lead to a target’s arrest are rarely the charges the target ultimately faces in a courtroom. Federal prosecutions—particularly complex, still unfolding ones like Mueller’s—often go through many legal iterations, with so-called superseding indictments either adding additional charges down the road as more information becomes known or, as trial nears, dropping ancillary charges in order to zero in on the most potent and provable ones.
However, as much as Law and Order may have taught us otherwise, very very few cases go to trial—generally more than 90 percent of federal cases are settled via plea bargain. That’s in part because the government is heavily incentivized to take the bird-in-hand of a lesser charge for a guaranteed success, but it's also because the government has tremendous leverage in a criminal negotiation, from the length and location of a prison sentence (much better to be in the low- security FCI Danbury prison in Connecticut than the high- security FCI Terre Haute in Indiana) to what assets the government might try to seize (think: “Nice house your family lives in—shame if something happened it”) to what the impact of a unfolding case might be on family members. (You have an aunt who overstayed her visa? Maybe the government promises to overlook that. Your son or wife was also in on the scheme? Maybe you plead guilty right now to a heftier charge to stop the investigation of your family.) Weissmann used this tool to effect in the Enron trial, leveraging the charges against former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow and his wife to encourage Fastow to testify against Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

Pay particular attention if you start seeing Mueller’s team filing not criminal indictments but “criminal informations,” which are effectively criminal charges done with the cooperation of the target: That means the suspect is cooperating with prosecutors and has likely worked out a deal to provide testimony or evidence against others or has negotiated the charges in advance and intends to plead guilty quickly.

It’s clear, too, that Mueller is coming at this investigation with an even broader lens: One of the Justice Department veterans he recruited to the team, Michael Dreeben, is known for being the government’s smartest mind on appellate cases—that is, how a case will play out down the road on appeal—and Dreeben has argued 100 cases before the US Supreme Court, putting him in a rare class of lawyer who can meld not just the evidence necessary for a trial but also the legal theory and jurisprudence necessary to sustain that case through years and rounds of appeals. There are signs, too, that Mueller is even thinking through how presidential pardons might shape his case.
5) Bob Mueller is after federal crimes, not political problems. It’s important to understand that the task before Mueller’s team of FBI agents and prosecutors isn’t to investigate and make public the full truth of the 2016 election. They have a much more narrow task: to determine whether there are definable criminal violations that amount to federal felonies or misdemeanors that can be proven in a courtroom beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the federal government’s standard rules of evidence and criminal procedure.
Sally Q. Yates—the acting attorney general fired by President Trump for refusing to implement the so-called Muslim ban—has argued since leaving office that Mueller’s standard should not be the nation’s only test of what happened in 2016. There are any number of behaviors and actions that might fall short of a definable, provable felony that we, as a democratic society and a sovereign nation that eschews foreign involvement in our politics, might find troubling behavior in our commander in chief and the leader of one branch of government. But it’s not entirely clear right now how the country might see such behavior or act upon it.

If Mueller uncovers such behavior, it remains an open question how he might convey this information to the public and political process. He might write a formal report, akin to what Ken Starr did during his probe into the Monica Lewinsky affair during the Clinton years or what the 9/11 Commission did following its investigation, and turn that over to the Justice Department to present to Congress. Or he might not. When Mueller, working in private practice after his stint as FBI director, was tasked with investigating the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case, he defined his mission as narrowly as possible—examining only the NFL’s handling of a video showing the original assault rather than getting into the larger questions of, say, whether the league coddles abusers.

This latter category of “political problems” ultimately ends up being the purview of Congress—and it will be almost inseparable from the conversation of whatever criminal charges and information stems from Mueller’s investigation. At each stage, we will see debates in the media and political circles: Are there political high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant action via presidential impeachment? Unfortunately, the Capitol Hill investigations have had a difficult road this year, and there seems little appetite for bipartisan action or a forthright debate about the 2016 election. The House investigation by the Intelligence Committee was quickly undermined by bizarre behavior by chair Devin Nunes, and now even the Senate investigation, which at least kept up the appearance of a bipartisan effort, appears to be faltering.
Which is a long roundabout way of saying: Monday’s charges are only the beginning of what’s sure to be a complex and deeply partisan process. And, if this weekend’s release of half-century-old files related to JFK’s assassination is any guide, we, as a country, may never feel like we fully understand what transpired in 2016.

This post has been updated to reflect that the Mueller team's first charges were brought against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-inte ... w-charges/


I Spent My Day Trying to Figure Out How to Spend Nearly $1 Million on Rugs
By Aaron Mak

How could Paul Manafort spend so much on rugs?
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images.

Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of money laundering and conspiracy in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

One of the more peculiar tidbits in the 31-page indictment was the accusation that Manafort had spent $934,350 of laundered money at an antique rug store in Alexandria, Virginia:

rug_screenshot
This raised many questions, including: How is it possible to spend nearly a million dollars on rugs? And where could you do it?


ADVERTISING

I started calling Alexandria rug stores and interior decorators once the news broke, contacting anyone who could help me understand where Manafort might have shopped and how easy it would be run up a seven-figure bill. I knew extremely rare rugs could go for millions of dollars. But the pattern described in the indictment was different: The purchases were made over the course of eight visits. I wanted to understand how someone could build such a collection.

As I was a dozen calls in, HuffPost, which had a similar idea, published a story with several stores denying any business with Manafort. Yet it also had one intriguing lead: a store called J&J Oriental Rugs told the reporter that Manafort’s supposed rug transactions were “confidential” and that there was “nothing to be proved.” The interaction ended with the representative telling HuffPost to talk to the store’s attorney.

I was at J&J an hour later to try my luck. The store sits on a leafy, postcard-worthy street in Old Town Alexandria that’s dotted with oyster bars, artisanal cupcake bakeries, yoga studios, and antique shops. The J&J building is one of the largest on the street—almost the size of a small warehouse.

When I stepped through the door, which was flanked by two enormous Chinese vases, I was greeted by the seemingly infinite collection of rugs they had to offer. There were different piles for bathroom-size rugs, living room–size rugs, and rugs so big I don’t know what you could possibly do with them. Some were a single shade, while others featured dizzyingly complex geometric designs.

A shopkeeper approached me and asked if I had any questions about rug sizes or prices. I asked him what their most expensive rug was, and he pointed to an approximately 10-by-20–foot silk rug that hung from the ceiling and covered almost the entire wall. The colors were dark and muted, and the design was a patchwork of squares that featured intricate tableaus of plants in fractal patterns, men on horseback, and delicate vases. It might very well be the Platonic ideal of opulence.

When I asked for the price, he said it was $10,000. I then identified myself as a reporter and asked him if Manafort had purchased a rug there. He told me the shop doesn’t talk to reporters and walked away.

But I left with one possible answer to the question. We don’t know if J&J is the store in question—other than its location and the suspicious-sounding answer, we don’t have any evidence to indicate that it’s the case—but if Manafort had spent nearly $1 million dollars on rugs at place like it, then he could have purchased 100 of these fabric mammoths. How big could his houses possibly be?


ADVERTISING

inRead invented by Teads
I tried another rug store in Alexandria called Art Underfoot, which was housed in a cavernous building across the street. When I introduced myself to the shopkeeper, a grizzled man wearing a red coat and sweatpants named Nick Nasseri, he immediately asked, “Are you here about that political guy? Manafort?”

Nasseri said that he had received “100 calls” from reporters on Monday even though he’s sure that Manafort never purchased any rugs from the store.

I then inquired as to what $934,350 could buy in rugs. Nasseri said that it depends, since some rugs are mass-produced while others are handcrafted. “Our rugs are real works of art. Real antiques,” he told me, pointing to the shop’s most expensive ware: an approximately 6-by-10–foot rug that was crafted in Iran in the 1850s and costs $45,000. Though over 150 years old, its colors and angular designs were still clear and vibrant. Other rugs in the store are priced depending on age and size—the newest rugs are still around 20 years old.

If I were to spend nearly $1 million dollars at Art Underfoot, Nasseri says I could probably buy 20 rooms worth of his most expensive rugs. But not all shops have similar price points. He says he once heard of a rug being sold for $400,000 somewhere down the street, at a store he believes has since closed. (If it still exists, I wasn’t able to find it. Manafort’s purchases happened between 2008 and 2010, so it’s possible this was the spot.)

I came to realize why the question I was asking is so tricky. It’s a bit like asking what millions of dollars could buy you in paintings: You could buy a ton of reprints or spend it all on a single original work by Basquiat.

So perhaps Manafort was a rug connoisseur who was willing to splurge on a valuable vintage. Perhaps, as the indictment seems to allege, he wanted something that would appreciate in value. Or maybe he just had so much money that he could spend it on whatever looked pretty.

Either way, here’s hoping the prosecutor schleps a gorgeous rug into the courtroom and submits it as evidence.http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... sible.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 31, 2017 7:28 pm

“It is very important for Ukraine to never see such a phenomenon as Manafort on its soil ever again

GOTCHA

Ukraine Believes Paul Manafort’s Crimes Go Way Beyond Money Laundering

Ukrainian investigators who helped collect evidence used to indict President Trump’s former campaign chairman also want to look at Manafort’s possible role in a 2014 massacre.

Anna Nemtsova
10.31.17 1:00 AM ET

MOSCOW—Many of Kiev’s journalists, investigators, and officials felt genuinely happy on Monday when they heard Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, had been indicted on charges of laundering more than $18 million from Ukraine.
Most of the 12 counts of the indictment pulled together by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team spoke about Manafort’s illegal financial deals when he was working for Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin Party of Regions from 2006 onward. It also accused him of “conspiracy against the United States,” since Manafort allegedly used multiple shell companies to hide his money, and never bothered to inform U.S. authorities about the true size of his income.


Manafort had racked up this fortune as an adviser to the infamously corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled into exile in Russia in 2014. So, to see Manafort brought up on charges and threatened with jail time was considered a triumph for Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, which overthrew Yanukovych. During the uprising, which centered on Kiev’s central square, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, more than 100 people lost their lives in 2014.
“It is very important for Ukraine to never see such a phenomenon as Manafort on its soil ever again,” journalist and commentator Ekaterina Sergatskova told The Daily Beast. “He symbolizes the ‘old regime’ of money laundering, corrupt lobbying, dirty scams—the regime that made millions suffer—both in Ukraine and in United States. Manafort served a regime that worked under Russia’s total control—that regime should never come to power in Ukraine again.”
In the past year, Ukrainians have constantly heard sinister news about Manafort. But the investigation conducted in the U.S. raised even more questions for people who want to know how he was advising Yanukovych as political opponents were rounded up and violent attacks mounted against the opposition.

“Manafort served a regime that worked under Russia’s total control.”
— Ekaterina Sergatskova, journalist and commentator

“Well done,” the head of Ukraine’s special prosecutions office, Serhiy Gorbatyuk, told The Daily Beast as he looked through the indictment. “We find item number 22 especially important: It confirms our own investigation was on the right track.”

Paragraph 22 of the indictment says that Manafort and his associate Richard W. Gates III directed the lobbyists they’d retained in Washington to lobby in connection with the roll out of a report commissioned by the government of Ukraine about the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine who spent three years in prison. The international democratic community, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, supported Tymoshenko in jail, while Manafort and Gates advised Yanukovych about his repressive politics

Over the past year, as The Daily Beast reported in May, Ukraine’s politicians have cooperated with the FBI while civil society groups and prosecutors have been working hard, conducting several independent investigations into the alleged corruption of Paul Manafort. Members of Ukraine’s parliament, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, prosecutors, and journalists were analyzing the list of 22 Manafort payments in 2007-2012 totaling more than $12 million.

As a result of Ukraine’s cooperation with Western media, the information about the “Black Ledger,” an accounting document found among the Yanukovych papers, exposed corruption in great detail, including some that involved Manafort. As a result, he had to quit Trump’s campaign.
“We hope that with the help of American investigators we’ll find what role Manafort’s friends among the Ukrainian oligarchs… played in money laundering,” prominent Ukrainian journalist Khristina Berdynskykh told The Daily Beast. “We are happy that it’s been proved that our former politicians threw away millions of dollars—it shows the scale of corruption; although we also wonder, of course, why for all these years American authorities have ignored Manafort’s actions.”
Was Manafort backing all the decisions by Yanukovych, including the murders of protesters in Maidan square? Many in Ukraine suspect that was the case.

Manafort returned to Kiev even after the horrible violence on its central square to help re-form the Party of Regions into a new organization. His representatives, including his current lawyer, insist he is innocent of charges in the U.S. indictment and that his role in Ukraine was to encourage pro-European Union democratic government. But investigators in Kiev aren't buying that for a minute.

In March this year The Daily Beast reported that Yevgenia Zakrevskaya, an attorney in the Ukrainian capital, and one of the strongest liberal voices in the country, focused attention on Manafort after text messages between his daughters were hacked and released in February. One of them, from Andrea Manafort to her sister, read “Don’t fool yourself. The money we have is blood money.”

“All Mr. Yanukovych’s allies, supporters of the former regime, should be questioned on this case as potentially responsible for the mass killings during the Maidan protests; including, if the facts get proved, Mr. Manafort,” Ukrainian legal expert Mikhail Zhernakov told The Daily Beast.
The Kremlin’s advisers who advised Yanukovych together with Manafort were also happy about the investigation for their own reasons.

“We feel malevolent joy about Manafort’s arrest,” Sergei Markov, Russia’s spin doctor during the Yanukovych presidential campaign, told The Daily Beast. “We Russians who worked with him in Kiev are gloating, as he was a CIA agent and it is fun to see America investigating its own former agents.”
Markov offered no proof of the CIA allegation, but he did reinforce the argument that Manafort was paid with dirty funds. “Of course Manafort was paid grey money and sent it to offshore accounts—that is what everybody does. Ukraine has always been corrupt.”

Moscow’s mainstream media, meanwhile, continued to deny Russia’s involvement with the U.S. election last year, pushing the story about fake news. On Monday one of the most popular news shows, Vesti, reported that Hillary Clinton paid $6 million for a campaign to discredit Trump. But even in Moscow nobody seemed too enthusiastic about defending Manafort.

At age 68, Manafort has devoted more than a decade of his life to lobbying for Russian and Ukrainian politicians, playing the role of a bridge between Russian oligarchs, the Kremlin, and Yanukovych. What kind of bridge he provided to the Trump campaign and Donald Trump himself remains to be seen. But the Ukrainians who helped the FBI gather key evidence against Manafort are happy to see that their efforts put him on the spot, and may yet land him in jail for a good long time.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ukraine-b ... laundering



1/ Manafort’s use of multiple phones and aliases is consistent with knowing that he was engaging in criminal activity.Renato Mariotti added,

Govt says that Manafort registered a phone and an email account under an alias earlier this year and traveled abroad with that phone

2/ In that respect, Manafort’s activity is consistent with drug cartel members that I investigated when I was a federal prosecutor.

3/ Here’s another odd fact—Manafort has three different passports with different serial numbers:Renato Mariotti added,

Manafort has three US passports with different numbers, per Mueller team filing https://assets.documentcloud.org/docume ... nafort.pdf

4/ No wonder that Mueller’s team distrusts Manafort and is confining him in his home. /end

https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti



Paul Manafort indictment exposes Russian spy’s involvement with Donald Trump campaign
Bill Palmer
Updated: 10:29 pm EDT Tue Oct 31, 2017
Home » Politics

Thirty-six hours after the arrest of Paul Manafort, the courts have unsealed additional documents surrounding his indictment and arrest. Those documents include stunning details about the extent and nature of Manafort’s financial connections. In particular, he was so closely linked to the Kremlin financially, he appears to have had joint bank accounts with the Russian spy who wielded significant control over the Donald Trump campaign.


The court documents in question reveal that Manafort has a “Russian national” as a signatory on his bank accounts. During her MSNBC show on Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow pieced together that the Russian national in question is Konstantin Kilimnik, who is widely believed to be a former Russian GRU agent, and thus still a de facto Russian government spy. Kilimnik has previously bragged that he got the Trump campaign to change the Republican Party platform to favor Russia (link). The Manafort indictment now gives us a much better understanding of how Kilimnik was able to wield that kind of control over the Trump campaign.


There are only a very small number of reasons that would explain why Paul Manafort would have had a Russian spy as a signatory on his bank accounts. The most likely would be that Manafort was so financially beholden to Russia, the Kremlin forced him to add Kilimnik to his bank accounts so that it could seize his money if he ever fell out of line. This would suggest that Manafort would have done just about anything Vladimir Putin wanted him to do. Now comes the essential question: why did Trump go along with the pro-Kremlin moves that Manafort was making?


One explanation is that Donald Trump was too aloof or senile to care what Paul Manafort was doing with the campaign, and he passively went along with every pro-Kremlin move Manafort wanted to make. Another explanation would be that Trump went along with it because he’s also financially beholden to the Kremlin. Will Robert Mueller’s investigation into Manafort’s finances expose a parallel money pipeline from the Kremlin to Trump?
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/sp ... rump/5832/


Grand Jury Docs Have Been Unsealed, and It’s Looking Even Worse for Manafort
by Elura Nanos | 4:22 pm, October 31st, 2017

The trial hasn’t even started yet, and already, things are going badly for Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. An October 2 Memorandum Opinion was unsealed yesterday, in which D.C. District Court Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell decided to compel grand jury testimony from a lawyer representing Manafort and Gates under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. The Special Counsel’s Office (referred to as “SCO” throughout the document) sought to compel the testimony of Manafort and Gates’ lawyer (referred to as “the Witness”). Now we know that the grand jury proceedings culminated in indictments, and Judge Howell’s ruling on the this motion to compel testimony is more than a little foreshadowing. The Court’s opinion on this issue allows us to peek into the generally secret grand jury proceedings, and that peek isn’t looking so good for the defendants.

When the Special Counsel tried to get Manafort’s lawyer on the stand, it was met with a very predictable obstacle: attorney-client privilege. Usually, lawyers are not compelled (or even permitted) to testify against their own clients, and revealing attorney-client communications is usually a major ethical breach. Courts are very hesitant to pierce privileges, whether the privilege at hand is attorney-client, spousal, doctor-patient, or priest-penitent. And on the spectrum of privileges, attorney-client is perhaps the second-most sacrosanct (it’s tough to get even the most liberal judge to invade the confessional). Judges know that the practice of law in our adversarial system would be seriously disadvantaged if lawyers could be called upon to give testimony against their own clients.

However, privileges are not absolute; among other exceptions is the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney-client privilege. Under this exception when a privileged relationship is used to further a crime, fraud, or other misconduct, the lawyer doesn’t get to use that relationship as a shield. The concept is easy, but getting a court to agree to use the exception is pretty challenging. In this case, Mueller’s office would have had to prove that the lawyer in question made the communication with the intent to further an unlawful or fraudulent act, and that Manafort and Gates actually carried out the crime or fraud. In other words, the judge at the grand jury proceeding found that there was plenty of evidence that Manafort and Gates had committed crime or fraud. Sure, for purposes of compelling a witness to testify at the grand jury phase, there’s no requirement that the crime or fraud is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and the evidentiary rules are different than they’ll be at trial. But bottom line, a federal judge looked at the evidence available to her and found that the SCO had made a good case for guilt against Manafort and Gates. Not a good start for the former Trump advisers.

At this point, we don’t know exactly upon which evidence the court relied; however, we do know that at least some of that evidence hasn’t yet been seen by the defendants. The court’s Memorandum explained that the court had “approved the use of ‘in camera, ex parte proceedings to determine the propriety of a grand jury subpoena or the existence of a crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.’”After those in camera (privately, with the judge), ex parte proceedings (outside the presence of Manafort, Gates, and their counsel), Judge Howell specifically found:

“…witness testimony and documentary evidence to show that these statements are false, contain half-truths, or are misleading by omission…”

The court’s memorandum was heavily redacted, so at this point, it’s unclear which statements the judge meant, but this portion of the document sure sounds bad for the defendants:

“… the above statement is false, a half-truth, or at least misleading because evidence shows that Target 1 and Target 2 were intimately involved in significant outreach in the United States on behalf of the ECFMU, the Party of Regions and/or the Ukrainian government.”

Yeah, things can change at trial, but even at a preliminary phase, it’s not good for a judge to make a finding that you’re “intimately involved” in sinister foreign misdealings. Oh, and there was also this:

“Through its ex parte production of evidence, the SCO has clearly met its burden of making a prima facie showing that the crime-fraud exception applies by showing that the Targets were “engaged in or planning a criminal or fraudulent scheme when [they] sought the advice of counsel to further the scheme.”

Those seven little letters should strike fear in the hearts of Manafort, Gates, and their lawyers. The SCO hasn’t just met its burden – it’s done so clearly. Allow me to translate from judge-to-English: “You guys are screwed. Take a plea or watch everyone around you– even your own lawyers — go down.”

https://lawnewz.com/uncategorized/grand ... -manafort/



Allow me to translate from judge-to-English: “You guys are screwed. Take a plea or watch everyone around you– even your own lawyers — go down.”

Paul Manafort Was Also Involved in One of France’s Biggest Political Scandals. Quelle Surprise.

By Joshua Keating
Frances-President-Nicolas-Sarkozy-L-a
Then–French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Edouard Balladur, former French prime minister, attend a ceremony in Paris on June 22, 2011.
AFP/Getty Images

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s shady dealings with Ukraine are the basis for the current charges against him, but the veteran consultant has a long history of sketchy clients internationally, from Congo’s Mobutu Sese Seko to the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos. Less discussed in the United States is his role in one of the biggest scandals and unsolved mysteries in French politics. The Karachi Affair involved shady diplomacy, campaign corruption, and possibly a deadly terrorist attack—and Manafort was right in the middle of it.


The Karachi Affair requires a bit of explanation: In the early 1990s, France’s partly state-owned defense contractor DCN was looking to sell attack submarines to Pakistan’s navy and was competing with Germany for the contract. At that time, it was still legal for firms in France, and a number of other countries, to pay “commissions”—bribes, basically—to foreign dignitaries, in order to facilitate deals like this. (The practice has since been banned.) Payments were promised to a number of Pakistani officials—totally legal—and DCN got the contract in 1994.

At this time, Socialist François Mitterand was nearing the end of his presidency, while the government was controlled by the center-right RPR party led by Jacques Chirac. Chirac had his ally Edouard Balladur serve as prime minister while he geared up for the 1995 presidential election. But Balladur decided he wanted to be president, setting up a a battle for the support of the French right between the two former friends. The problem for Balladur was that Chirac controlled the party and its war chest, so he needed to look elsewhere for funding. Allegedly, he looked to Pakistan.

According to French media reports, just before the submarine deal was signed, Balladur’s government added two extra intermediaries, both Lebanese businessmen, to be paid commissions. These guys allegedly channeled money through a shell company back into Balladur’s campaign: An extra 10 million francs (roughly $1.7 million) in cash—one-fifth of his total funds—was reportedly paid into his campaign account at almost the same time. In other words, Balladur is accused of disguising illegal campaign contributions as legal bribes.

That 10 million francs wasn’t enough, as it turned out. Chirac beat both Balladur and Socialist challenger Lionel Jospin to become president, and immediately set up an investigation and halted payment on the commissions.

In 2002, a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a bus in Karachi, Pakistan, killing three Pakistani nationals and 11 French engineers who had been working on the submarines that had been sold as part of the deal eight years earlier. The attack was initially blamed on al-Qaida, but no one in the terrorist group ever claimed responsibility for it and that explanation was later ruled out by investigators. In 2008, the investigative website Mediapart reported on the existence of an internal DCN report suggesting that the attack may have been a reprisal against France for its nonpayment of the commissions.

As if that weren’t shocking enough, by this time, the president of France was Nicolas Sarkozy, who had been Balladur’s budget minister and a spokesman for his campaign back in 1995. Families of the killed engineers demanded legal action against Sarkozy, arguing that it would have been impossible for him not to know about the payments.

Sarkozy was protected by immunity but faced investigation after he left office. (This was just one of a number of high-profile corruption scandals involving Sarkozy.) The investigation is ongoing: Balladur, who denies any wrongdoing and has been out of office for more than two decades, was placed under formal investigation just last May.

So what did Balladur do, you might be wondering, with the money that he was willing to tarnish France’s reputation and possibly put French lives at risk to obtain? Well, he gave at least some of it to Paul Manafort.

In 2013, Manafort told French investigators that he had been paid $52,000 to conduct an opinion poll and $34,975 to craft a campaign strategy for Balladur. The money came from a bank account held by Abdul Rahman el-Assir, one of the two Lebanese businessmen who served as middlemen in the submarine deal. The other middleman, ski-resort-owning arms broker Ziad Takieddine—who was later arrested while trying to flee France on a false passport—acted as Manafort’s translator in a meeting. French media described Manafort as “a key link connecting Balladur with the middlemen.”

Balladur’s whole scheme apparently didn’t raise any red flags for Manafort at the time, just as the consultant’s background didn’t raise any red flags for Donald Trump last year.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... ndals.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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