With the resignation of Rick Gates’ lawyers and the apparent plea deal that resulted, much of the attention on Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has ignored Paul Manafort. Unfortunately for the former Trump campaign manager, that all changed on Monday when BuzzFeed News reported that Mueller’s team had resurrected details on “suspicious” transactions over $40 million that were previously unearthed by the FBI. Manafort’s questionable financial dealings were first discovered in 2014, though it seems they occurred as late as 2016.
According to BuzzFeed, investigators “identified more than $40 million in ‘suspicious’ financial transactions to and from companies controlled by” Manafort, which is much larger than the amount previously reported in his indictment. Much of the activity previously traced by the FBI dates between 2004 and 2014:
Eight banks filed 23 “suspicious activity reports” between 2004 and 2014, which includes the years that Manafort and his consulting company, Davis Manafort Partners, worked for Yanukovych. These reports, reviewed by BuzzFeed News, show that between October 2008 and July 2013, Manafort’s personal and business accounts received about $30 million from banks in offshore havens such as Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
However, Mueller’s team has since discovered that “banks continued to send in suspicious activity reports on transactions involving Manafort or his companies all the way through 2016.” And with Manafort’s ex-associate Gates possibly readying himself to testify against him as part of the Russia probe, more of the former Trump campaign manager’s dirty financial laundry (and its possible ties to collusion) are sure to surface.
(Via BuzzFeed News)