Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show

[MelissaB]

Source: New York Times

Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016.

The money appears to have been owed by shell companies connected to Mr. Manafort’s business activities in Ukraine when he worked as a consultant to the pro-Russia Party of Regions. The Cyprus documents obtained by The New York Times include audited financial statements for the companies, which were part of a complex web of more than a dozen entities that transferred millions of dollars among them in the form of loans, payments and fees.

The records, which include details for numerous loans, were certified as accurate by an accounting firm as of December 2015, several months before Mr. Manafort joined the Trump campaign, and were filed with Cyprus government authorities in 2016. The notion of indebtedness on the part of Mr. Manafort also aligns with assertions made in a court complaint filed in Virginia in 2015 by the Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, who claimed Mr. Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million related to a failed investment in a Ukrainian cable television business.

After The Times shared some of the documents with representatives of Mr. Manafort, a spokesman, Jason Maloni, did not dispute that the debts might have existed at one time. But he maintained that the Cyprus records were “stale and do not purport to reflect any current financial arrangements.”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/paul-manafort-russia-trump.html?_r=1

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. And unless a NY state AG can do something, nothing will ever be done to anybody.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. "Stale", hunh? Guess Putin wrote them off in exchange for collusion. . . nt

[riversedge]

10. Hopefully, it has some stink on it yet.

[FarPoint]

3. I believe.....

Rachel Maddows was onto this 2 months ago!

[cstanleytech]

4. If he or Flynn for that matter know anything I hope that they have good bodyguards and

food tasters because people that Putin wants out of the way tend to end up 6 feet under and in some cases radioactive as well.

[turbinetree]

5. What was good old Wilbur Ross doing about this, let me guess.............

a little laundry here and little laundry there................

[BigmanPigman]

6. I know we'll never know the real $ total but I wonder what a rough estimate would be

if you added all the debt and bad loans of the Donald, his family, cabinet members, campaign members, and advisers owe to Russia (including the oligarchs, banks, the Russian government, etc).

100,000 give or take a few million?

And they want me to die in poverty and pain since I have two pre-existing conditions. Sounds fair to me.

[Corgigal]

7. Maybe why manafort is still alive.

However, Russia may wants that debt settled soon.

[canetoad]

8. Seventeen Million

That number rang a loud bell.

I posted this in LBN a few days ago.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141821462

"Kiev: Paul Manafort, US President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, recently filed financial reports with the Justice Department showing that he earned nearly $US17 million ($21.7 million) for two years of work for a Ukrainian political party with links to the Kremlin."

[FakeNoose]

9. That would be the quid pro quo, maybe?

They wrote off the $17 million debt when the GOP party platform got changed to take Ukraine off the table.
Trump and Manafort did that in July 2016, am I right?