Manafort accused of using London company to help to launder $18m
Mysterious deaths, easy access to City institutions, a salacious dossier… Is the UK overly lax on Russians?
Robert Mendick,
Alec Luhn
Ben Riley-smith
DONALD TRUMP’S election campaign chairman has been accused of setting up a British business to help to launder millions of dollars earned from a secret deal lobbying for a pro-russian party in Ukraine.
Court papers filed in Washington allege that a company registered in north London and linked to Paul Manafort, the former Trump aide, and his colleague Richard Gates was used to funnel almost $200,000 (£150,000) to pay for improvements at upmarket properties in the United States. The money was allegedly used for landscape gardening at a mansion in New York state and for a home entertainment system at a villa in Florida. Mr Manafort has properties in both locations.
The disclosure puts London at the centre of the inquiry into claims that Russia interfered in the presidential election to ensure Mr Trump defeated his democrat rival Hillary Clinton.
George Papadopoulos, a Londonbased foreign policy aide to Trump during his election campaign, has already pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about timings of meetings with a British university professor with links to Russia.
Papadopoulos is cooperating with authorities over claims Russia had promised him “dirt” on Mrs Clinton, three months before hacked emails were leaked that had a devastating effect on her campaign.
The British company Pompolo Ltd is identified in charges against Mr Manafort and Mr Gates. The indictment alleges that the men “generated tens of millions of dollars” from work in Ukraine and then “in order to hide” the payments from US authorities “laundered the money through American and foreign companies”. They face 12 charges which they vehemently deny.
Pompolo’s sole director and shareholder is listed as Mr Gates who set the company up in April 2013. It was dissolved in November 2014 without ever filing any accounts or annual returns.
The company was based in an anonymous two-storey brick building in Finchley in north London. The Daily Telegraph understands Pompolo was set up by Mr Gates, who paid £50 to a UK firm to register the business for him over the internet.
According to the indictment, Mr Manafort and Mr Gates “owned or controlled” 15 foreign companies – most of them based in Cyprus – which were used in the alleged money laundering scheme. On July 15 2013, the indict- ment alleges that $175,575 (£133,000) was transferred from Pompolo to a company in Florida that provided “lighting and home entertainment”. On the same day $13,325 went from Pompolo to a “landscaper in the Hamptons”, the exclusive resort in New York state.
In total, according to the indictment, more than $75 million “flowed through the offshore accounts”.
Mr Manafort is accused of “laundering more than $18million, which was used to buy property, goods and services in the US, income that he concealed from the US Treasury, the Department of Justice and others”.
Mr Manafort and Mr Gates face a maximum 20 years in jail if found guilty of money laundering, the most serious of the charges that they face.
Papadopoulos’s decision to plead guilty to misleading the FBI and the inquiry has caused serious embarrassment for President Trump.
It should come as no surprise that London again finds itself taking centre stage as the Trump administration is engulfed by yet another scandal concerning its links to Russia. For wealthy Muscovites, the British capital is these days known as Londongrad, a tribute to the vast amount of wealth they have invested in the city since Russian president Vladimir Putin came to power.
One in 10 houses in the £1.5 million-and-above price bracket in London were bought by Russian buyers.
Nor is Russia’s investment in London confined to the realms of asset management and social oneupmanship. Security officials estimate there are at least as many Russian agents operating in London today as there were at the height of the Cold War, with Russian intelligence officers said to be behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko at a London hotel in 2006. Since then a number of Russians opposed to Mr Putin’s autocratic rule have died in mysterious circumstances, including Boris Berezovsky, the outspoken Putin critic who was found dead in his bath.
With so much Russian activity in London, it is almost inevitable that some of the more lurid claims about Donald Trump’s contacts with Moscow during last year’s presidential election should have a London link.
Earlier this year Christopher Steele, a former middle-ranking MI6 officer, became involved in the controversy after his London-based firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, was found to be the author of a salacious 35-page dossier about the US president’s alleged links with Russia. The dossier included unsubstantiated claims that the Russians possess videos involving prostitutes filmed at a luxury hotel during a 2013 visit by Mr Trump to Moscow, and were being used to blackmail the president.
The dossier also claims that Mr Trump’s advisers maintained regular contact with Russian officials, and others linked to Russian intelligence, during the election and had been exchanging information for “at least” eight years. Earlier this month Mr Steele met with Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who is now the independent special counsel appointed to investigate allegations of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
Now it transpires that another London-based figure has become embroiled in the scandal, after The
Daily Telegraph yesterday named Professor Joseph Mifsud, the honorary director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, as the intermediary who is said to have offered to introduce one of Mr Trump’s aides to Russian officials who had “the dirt” on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate.
Court papers released in the US this week say Prof Mifsud offered to help George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, acquire the information. Prof Mifsud has denied the allegations, while Mr Papadopoulos has now pleaded guilty to lying to US federal agents about his Russian links.
The very fact, though, that yet another British-based figure has been implicated in the investigation into Mr Trump’s Russian links inevitably invites the question of whether the British authorities are doing enough to monitor the activities of pro-putin supporters in London, as well as other parts of the UK.
One area of particular concern for US officials is the continued access that Russian oligarchs with close ties to Mr Putin have to the City of London. America has imposed wide-ranging sanctions against a number of Russian banks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea three years ago. But US officials are concerned that Moscow is getting around the sanctions because of the access pro-putin supporters have to London’s financial institutions.
Eyebrows have been raised in Washington, for example, over the forthcoming proposed float on the London Stock Exchange of EN+, a Russian energy company owned by Oleg Deripaska, the controversial Russian oligarch and Putin acolyte. Mr Deripaska came to prominence in the UK nearly 10 years ago when George Osborne, then Tory Shadow Chancellor, was accused of seeking a donation for the party from the oligarch.
Now Mr Deripaska’s name has surfaced in the US, where The
Washington Post has linked him to the Trump scandal. Paul Manafort, Mr Trump’s election campaign chairman, who has been charged with lobbying for a pro-russian party in Ukraine, is reported to have offered to provide Mr Deripaska with briefings on the election. Mr Deripaska denies any wrongdoing.
American diplomats, though, regard Mr Deripaska as being one of Mr Putin’s key allies, and if investigators look into his dealings with Mr Manafort further, then that will inevitably raise questions about whether British bodies like the Financial Conduct Authority should allow the EN+ float to proceed – the first by a Russian company since the invasion of Crimea.
In the past the US has banned individuals like Mr Deripaska from entering the country. If any more evidence emerges of improper behaviour by Russian oligarchs operating in our capital, you can bet Britain will come under pressure to close down Londongrad, too.
FOLLOW Con Coughlin on Twitter @concoughlin; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion