Paul Manafort and Ferdinand Marcos
Marcos, then in his third decade as leader of the Philippines, had developed a reputation in Washington as a stalwart ally in the fight against communism. But he was facing rising concerns about rampant corruption, plundering of public resources and human rights violations under his increasingly despotic leadership, during which Amnesty International now estimates 34,000 people were tortured and 3,240 killed. Meanwhile, Marcos amassed a fortune estimated at $10 billion, spending big on paintings by Pissarro and Manet, a fleet of private planes and helicopters and Mercedes-Benzes.
Manafort, then in his 30s, was a hotshot Republican operative who had made his name helping Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, and was pioneering a new form of international political consulting. The model, which allowed him to indulge his taste for the high-life, parlayed his clout with the emergent conservative ruling class into lucrative gigs representing foreign leaders looking to buff their reputations in Washington.
A Marcos front group would eventually hire Manafort to try to help him retain his grip on power, agreeing to pay Manafort’s firm $950,000 a year — one of the first big foreign gigs landed by the firm. But back then, during the Wild West days of the international political industry, there was more buzz in Washington and Manila about Manafort’s proximity to Marcos during a period of epic spending to support a lavish lifestyle and to curry favor with influential Americans.
One example, according to documents, including some published here for the first time: Marcos earmarked huge sums of cash for Reagan’s 1980 and 1984 campaigns — as much as $57 million, according to one claim made to Philippine investigators. There’s no evidence that any cash ever made it into Reagan’s coffers, which would have been illegal since U.S. election laws ban donations from foreigners. And, despite extensive government investigations on both sides of the Pacific into the freewheeling spending of the Marcos regime, there’s never before been much serious inquiry of what ultimately happened to the cash intended for political contributions. The lack of a transparent paper trail — combined with the larger than life personas of Marcos and Manafort — spawned a swirl of theories.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952#ixzz4HTe1Qgv2
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