Trump’s ex-aide Manafort faces up to 10 years in jail in second case
WASHINGTON: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort faces his second sentencing hearing in as many weeks, with a judge expected to tack on additional prison time beyond the roughly four-year punishment he has already received.
Manafort, 69, faces up to 10 additional years in prison when he is sentenced on Wednesday in Washington in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A judge in Virginia last week s e nt e nced Manafort to 47 months in prison, far below sentencing guidelines that allowed for more than two decades in prison, prompting national debate about disparities in how rich and poor defendants are treated by the criminal justice system.
As US district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington decides whether the sentences should run consecutively or at the same time, she is likely to take into account allegations by prosecutors that Manafort tampered with witnesses after he was charged and that he lied to investigators even after he pleaded guilty and pledged to cooperate.
The hearing may offer a window into allegations that aren’t part of the criminal cases against him. AP NEWYORK: Global banks are being used to facilitate payments of vast sums in illegal deals that are undermining United Nations Security Council sanctions, a UN report found.
The report, made public on Tuesday, says that banks and insurance companies continue to unwittingly allow payments and provide coverage for vessels involved in “ever-larger, multimillion-dollar” deals. “Global banks are involved in two main problems,” Hugh Griffiths, the head of the UN panel overseeing sanctions on North Korea, said in an interview Tuesday. “They are facilitating the transfer of funds for prohibited ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products. And they’re also facilitating prohibited coal exports involving deals organised by North Korean diplomats.”
In one case, the report alleged that a series of North Korean-directed payments totaling more than $500,000 were made through transactions linked to a JPMORgan Chase & Co. account in New York. The transactions were used for a coal shipment aboard the vessel Wise Honest. The 25,500 metric tons of coal aboard the Wise Honest was sold for almost $3 million, the report said.
The report said the shipment was one example of how North Korea continues to profit from coal exports and how commodity traders make hefty commissions from such deals. A Jpmorgan spokesman wasn’t immediately available to comment.