Former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort has agreed to pay the U.S. government $3.15 million to settle a civil case after the Justice Department sued and accused him of using offshore accounts to stash money from his consulting work in Ukraine.
The feds sued Manafort last April, seeking fines, penalties, and interest for ‘his willful failure to timely report his financial interest in foreign bank accounts’ in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
In an indictment unsealed in 2017, the Grand Jury for the District of Columbia has charged the pair with laundering $75 million in payments into foreign nominee companies and bank accounts, opened by them and their accomplices in nominee names and in various foreign countries, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).
According to the indictment, Manafort and Gates owned or controlled 17 domestic entities, 12 in cyprus and two in SVG, (Global Endeavour Inc. and Jennet Ltd) which were used in the scheme.
Included in wire transfers sent by Manafort between 2008 and 2014, was a total of $1.4 million originating from SVG, described by newsweek on Sunday as a “prime money-laundering destination”. The indictment states that “Manafort did not pay taxes on this income,” which was used to make the purchases.
On Monday, the court said that effort to claw back cash came after the government’s plans to seize real estate assets worth millions following Trump’s pardon of Manafort during his last days in office.
The government said Manafort ‘knowingly, intentionally, and willfully filed and conspired to file false tax returns from 2006-2015 in that he said he did not have reportable foreign bank accounts when he knew that he did.’
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was his client, along with Manafort’s former deputy Rick Gates and associate Konstantin Kilimnik, identified in a Senate report as a ‘Russian intelligence officer.’
Manafort faced criminal charges as part of special counsel Robert Mueller´s Russia investigation into Trump’s associates.
A jury convicted him in 2018 of eight financial crimes, including several related to his political consulting work in Ukraine, but the judge hearing the case declared a mistrial on 10 other counts when jurors could not reach a verdict.
Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
Trump pardoned his former campaign chairman on Christmas Eve, 2020, with just days left in office.
Manafort’s ties to Ukraine led to his ouster from Trump’s campaign in August 2016, less than a month after Trump accepted the Republican nomination.
