DA eyes Newsweek $ trail: source

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Newsweek probe is focusing on alleged money laundering, The Post has learned.

The probe, run out of the DA’s cybercrimes unit, is looking into a possible “money trail” linking San Francisco’s Olivet University and executives at Newsweek Media Group, the magazine’s parent, according to a source close to the company.

Olivet was founded by followers of a controversial Christian fundamentalist church headed by Korean-American pastor David Jang, who has long been rumored to have helped finance IBT Media — now known as Newsweek Media Group.

IBT Media co-founders Etienne Uzac and Johnathan Davis, the company’s exchief executive and ex-chief content officer, respectively, have consistently denied any financing link.

Amid a 2016 cash crunch at IBT in North America, Uzac was replaced as CEO by Dev Pragad — who had been running the more financially sound international arm of IBT Media.

About two-dozen investigators from the Manhattan DA’s office spent about seven hours in Newsweek offices on Thursday — eventually leaving with 18 computer servers.

Newsweek Editor Bob Roe tried to assure worried journalists in the newsroom on Friday that the probe was not aimed at reporters’ sources and was not connected to stories published by the magazine.

The raid was the latest chapter in a 17month-old grand jury probe of Newsweek and Olivet, said a source.

A Newsweek spokesman on Friday said the company is continuing to cooperate with the DA’s probe.