Paul Manafort used Wilbur Ross' Bank of Cyprus to handle all his illicit Russian funding needs
By Mark Sumner
Thursday Mar 23, 2017 · 10:28 AM PDT
TrumpWorld is a land of coincidences. Some of those are happy, like how nice it was that Secretary of Commerce (and “King of Bankruptcy”) Wilbur Ross had a bank perfectly suited to launder the money that Paul Manafort raked in helping to spread Putin-ism throughout Eastern Europe, including the $12.7 million Manafort is accused of stealing from Ukraine. Money from both hauls appears to have moved through Ross’ Bank of Cyprus.
Federal prosecutors became interested in Manafort's activities years ago as part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukrainian assets after the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych there in early 2014.
As it turns out, that’s not all the games Manafort was playing in Cyprus. Ross’ bank was like a second home to Manafort … or at least to the money he took from “clients.”
In the 2014 case, Manafort 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. Deripaska said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.
Manafort’s account ended up fat a few million while Deripaska mysteriously failed to acquire his cable company. Almost as if Manafort was really being paid for something else. That may seem odd, but other people are having connections that are even less enjoyable.
Former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov was shot and killed in Kiev Thursday in what the Ukrainian president has labelled an act of Russian “state terrorism.”
What drew a target on Voronenkov’s back seems to have been knowing too much about Paul Manafort’s former client, Viktor Yanukovych.
10h
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Oh, yes. He'd best turn state's before he gets the ballistic flu from Vlad. t.co
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*Manafort feverishly searches WebMD for "polonium poisoning symptoms"*
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But the threat of radioactive elements isn’t the only reason the Trump White House is hiding from Manafort.
The White House on Wednesday sought to again distance itself from President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who is under increasing scrutiny over his connections to Russian business interests.
After days of trying to “distance itself” from Manafort and claiming that he had a minor role in the campaign, it’s hard to escape the fact that Manafort designed the Trump campaign down to Trump’s signature rallies and ran the entire show up to and beyond the RNC.
After supposedly leaving the campaign under a cloud concerning his pro-Russian activities in Ukraine, Manafort was never far away, and his associate Rick Gates remains a key player.
Through Manafort, Gates is tied to many of the same business titans from Ukraine and Russia, including Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Manafort had a multimillion-dollar contract with Deripaska between at least 2005 and 2009 that was aimed at helping the political interests of Putin.
That plan was the package that Manafort offered to put together to make the United States more favorable to Putin’s Russia. Meanwhile Trump contends that he knew nothing about the affair that involved his campaign chair, his commerce secretary, and his surrogate.
The AP's reporting about Manafort's activities "undermines the groundless assertions that the administration has been making that there are no ties between President Trump and Russia. This is not a drip, drip, drip," said Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California, a member of the House intelligence committee. "This is now dam-breaking with water flushing out with all kinds of entanglements."
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