A New York Times report sheds new light on the close ties between Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and Kremlin cronies in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Rick Wilking / Reuters
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Donald Trump is scheduled to deliver what aides are billing as a major foreign-policy speech Monday afternoon, but his campaign is, yet again, already playing defense.
In a major piece published Sunday evening, The New York Times delves into the work of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine. For years, Manafort worked for Viktor Yanukovych, a Kremlin protege who was deposed as president amid widespread demonstrations in 2014. Trump has been unusually positive about Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the campaign, raising questions about why he would seek to reverse decades of American policy toward Moscow, and while the newest reports about Manafort do not answer those questions, they do demonstrate close links between a Putin ally and one of Trump’s top advisers.
The Times reports on handwritten ledgers that list $12.7 million in cash payments to Manafort from Yanukovych’s political party between 2007 and 2012. While it isn’t clear from the records whether Manafort actually received the money, the documents, obtained by the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau, sketch out some of Manafort’s many ties in the region:
Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials. In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Manafort’s work for Yanukovych is not a revelation, but the $12.7 million figure is. The ledgers reportedly do not offer explanations for the payments, simply numbers. While Manafort declined to answer the newspaper’s questions, he gave a statement to CBS’s Major Garrett in which he said, “The simplest answer is the truth: I am a political professional.” He said he had never worked for the governments of either Ukraine or Russia, that all of his payments had been above board, and that money went to compensate his large team of employees.
Being associated with unsavory leaders whose interests run counter to U.S. policy, or who have been involved in repression against citizens, is a professional risk of Manafort’s brand of political consulting. His company formerly worked for Filipino dictator Feridinand Marcos, among others.
But the Times story suggest there may have been more to Manafort’s work in Ukraine than simple electioneering. Prosecutors allege that Yanukovych and his allies, including Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch close to Putin, set up a network of offshore companies based in tax shelters like the Cayman Islands, which they used to launder money stolen from public coffers.
In 2007, Manafort co-founded an investment fund called Pericles Emerging Markets, whose major backer was Deripaska. The Russian planned to buy a series of assets, including a telecom company called Black Sea Cable, through Pericles. Black Sea Cable, in turn, was controlled by Yanukovych cronies. It’s unclear, though, exactly what happened next:
More:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/the-manafort-dossier/495851/
