New fraud charges against Manafort
Trump campaign manager exaggerated his income to take out mortgages on homes, special counsel says
Even as he was managing Donald Trump’s campaign for president, Paul Manafort lied to banks to secure millions of dollars in cash loans as part of a decade-long money laundering scheme, according to charges unsealed by the US special counsel on Thursday.
Manafort exaggerated his income by millions of dollars to take out mortgages on homes in SoHo and the Hamptons that he had purchased years earlier in part with income illegally funnelled through offshore bank accounts, according to the indictment.
Laundered money
The laundered money — which totalled $30 million (Dh110 million)— came from Manafort’s work as a lobbyist and political consultant to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the Russia-aligned former Ukrainian president.
But after Yanukovych was ousted in 2014 and fled to Russia, Manafort’s income quickly dwindled. The 32-count indictment describes a complex plot that Manafort then undertook to leverage money from his real estate with the help of his longtime business partner and campaign deputy, Rick Gates.
The charges do not involve Trump or his campaign and are not significantly different from ones filed against the men in October. But they outline new criminal behaviour and appear to be the latest attempt by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, to pressure Manafort and Gates to cooperate with his inquiry to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.
The men have said they have nothing to offer Mueller on the central question of the investigation: whether any associates of Trump coordinated with Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election.
Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty, and a spokesman for Manafort denied wrongdoing.
“Paul Manafort is innocent of the allegations set out in the newly filed indictments, and he is confident that he will be acquitted of all charges,” the spokesman, Jason Maloni, said in a statement.