U.S. Officials Investigating Manafort Offshore Financial Transactions
Agents for the Treasury Department have obtained details of overseas financial transactions involving Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman.
The information is part of an anti-corruption investigation into Paul Manafort’s past work in Eastern Europe, according to an Associated Press report.
Officials in Cyprus reportedly turned over information about Manafort’s financial transaction to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network earlier this year.
The AP, which confirmed the exchange a person familiar with the case, notes that that Manafort is known to have route financial transactions through Cyprus. The report is based in part on records of international wire transfers and public court documents obtained by the AP.
The AP reported that Manafort was known to route financial transactions through Cyprus, and used Cypriot shell companies as part of a nearly $19 million deal with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to purchase Ukrainian cable television provider Black Sea Cable.
And in one case, the Associated Press found that a Manafort-linked company received a $1 million payment in October 2009 from a mysterious firm through the Bank of Cyprus. The $1 million payment left the account the same day — split in two, roughly $500,000 disbursements to accounts with no obvious owner.
The Associated Press also reported that the court documents came from a 2014 case in the Cayman Islands involving Manafort and Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch who is close to Vladimir Putin that reportedly paid Manafort at least $20 million to help further the Putin government’s agenda in the United States.
U.S. officials are no investigating millions of dollars of wire transfers to Manafort, the AP reported.
The AP reported Wednesday that Manafort signed a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska in 2006 to implement his strategy for undermining anti-Russian sentiment across former Soviet republics and in the United States.
