Paul Manafort

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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:00 am

my advice for Paul ...say away from windows and balconies

HEADLINES

MAJOR AP SCOOP: Manafort had $10m contract from Russia billionaire to aid Putin in US, Europe politics


Ukrainian lawmaker calls for former Trump aide Paul Manafort to face graft probe
Manafort has been accused of receiving more than $12 million in cash from an off-the-books account tied to a Kremlin-backed Ukranian political party



Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort wanted for questioning in Ukraine corruption case
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Russian thrown out window before he could testify for Putin’s nemesis; Donald Trump connected
By Bill Palmer | March 21, 2017 | 0
Research by Karen Fehlker for Palmer Report

Russian attorney Nikolai Gorokhov was thrown out of the window of his fourth floor apartment in Moscow today, just before he was set to testify on behalf of Vladimir Putin’s longtime foe Sergei Magnitsky tomorrow. Magnitsky was murdered eight years ago but Putin has him posthumously on trial anyway, in an apparent attempt at sabotaging the “Magnitsky Act” which was named after him. And as it turns out, the Magnitsky Act has direct ties to Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump.

Nikolai Gorokhov has somehow survived his steep fall today, and is currently in intensive care. As we reported an hour ago, Gorokhov was a key witness in the New York based investigation into Russian financial crimes led by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was summarily fired by Donald Trump just days ago. But the Kremlin’s primary motivation for wanting Gorokhov dead may be more directly tied to the Magnitsky Act.

Sergei Magnitsky’s murder in 2009 led to the passing of the Magnitsky Act in the United States in 2012, which placed automatic sanctions on any Russian officials who killed any Russian citizen for political reasons. Those sanctions have gone on to cost Vladimir Putin and his allies as much as $80 billion per year (source: Defend Democracy). If Donald Trump gets the Magnitsky Act repealed, the Kremlin will be able to cash in immediately. As such, the current posthumous criminal trial against Magnitsky appears to be an attempt at smearing his legacy and laying the groundwork for making the Magnitsky Act more easily repealed by Trump. But Trump has a much more direct personal connection to the Magnitsky Act.

Russia hired former Ronald Reagan aide Ken Duberstein to lobby against the passing of the Magnitsky Act in the United States (source: government filing). And it turns out Duberstein is a longtime member of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach (NY Times). So even as the Kremlin has apparently thrown Nikolai Gorokhov out of a window today to prevent him from testifying in defense of Sergei Magnitsky, in a trial whose purpose is to give Trump cover for repealing the Magnitsky Act, the Kremlin’s original lobbyist against the act already has close personal to ties to Trump.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/russia ... cted/2009/

Insider the Alt-Right/All-Russia Nexus

ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedMARCH 21, 2017, 7:17 PM EDT
5011Views
Now that we've learned that Breitbart and Infowars have somehow figured into the FBI's counter-intelligence probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, I want to return to a topic we discussed late last summer and into the fall. At the time we saw a disconcerting pattern. Trump friends, associates and staffers would go on TV make some wild claim that no one had heard before. Then it would turn out that the only other place the story had appeared was on RT or SputnikNews or even some Russian language propaganda mill.

One example came in mid-August when campaign chief Paul Manafort went State of the Union with Jake Tapper told a story about how US troops at the NATO base at Incirlik, Turkey had been repeatedly attacked by terrorists. This was part of the campaign message of Obama weakness, which Trump could repair. The only problem was that nothing like this had happened. (This was relatively soon after the failed coup in Turkey.) So where had Manafort gotten this? It turned out that the only other publications which had reported anything remotely like this were RT and Sputnikness. Hayes Brown caught this at the time in Buzzfeed.

If you're of a conspiratorial mind you might say, wow, Russian disinformation and propaganda keeps ending in the mouths of top Trump staffers. That's kind of weird. Is Russia somehow supplying this disinformation directly to the Trump campaign? That seems a bit hard to figure. But as I explained in this post at the time, there was another explanation.

We know that at the time Donald Trump's Twitter feed, which was clearly where he got a lot of his information, was positively lousy with alt-right Twitter feeds, often of the harshest racist and neo-Nazi variety. The whole Trump crew, which was still fairly small at the time, was awash in this stuff. For whatever reason these streams were filled with stories from RT, Sputiknews and other rightist-European news sites which themselves often picked up stories.

Was rooted in ideological affinity? Were these streams being targeted by Russian propagandists? Or, important to consider, were these streams actually filled with "alt-right" Russian bots and sock-puppets presenting themselves feral Trumpers on Twitter? Who knows? But whatever the reason, if you spent a lot of time on alt-right Twitter (which we know Trump and his crew was) you'd see this stuff a lot.

Why were Trump surrogates always pitching Russian propaganda? Because it was filling their Twitter feeds. This was likely the main reason Trump kept getting in trouble for RT'ing tweets from notorious white supremacists.

The fact that these sites and their audiences were apparently targeted as vectors for spreading pro-Trump and anti-Hillary propaganda, although perhaps unwittingly, is probably the best explanation of why they're coming up in these probes.

But here's another thing to consider, something I knew nothing about at the time.

That Manafort interview above was on August 14th, 2016. We now know that only five days earlier top Trump foreign policy advisor Mike Flynn had signed a $500,000 deal to advocate for the Turkish government. He was actually retained by a Dutch firm, Inovo, owned by a Turkish-American business man Ekim Alptekin. But his job was to advocate for the Republic of Turkey, particularly its demand that the US extradite a Muslim cleric in exile in the US who the Erdogan government blamed for the coup.

I'd have to refresh my memory on all the ins and outs of that moment, whether this might have been something Flynn told Manafort, whether it might have seemed helpful to his advocacy. So this may have figured into this bizarre moment to. But the use of these far-right and alt-right sites as vectors for pro-Trump Russian propaganda was clear at the time. Little surprise that is being scrutinized today.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/ins ... ssia-nexus


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Paul Manafort, Former Trump Campaign Chief, Faces New Allegations in Ukraine
By ANDREW E. KRAMERMARCH 20, 2017

Paul Manafort speaking to reporters during the Republican National Convention last year. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
KIEV, Ukraine — After his name surfaced last August in a secret ledger listing millions of dollars in payments from a pro-Russian party in Ukraine, Paul Manafort not only lost his job running Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign but also assumed center stage in a bizarre internecine struggle among Ukrainian political forces.

On Monday, the intrigue took another turn, when a member of Parliament in Ukraine released documents that he said showed that Mr. Manafort took steps to hide the payments, which were tied to Mr. Manafort’s work for former President Viktor F. Yanukovych. The documents included an invoice that appeared to show $750,000 funneled through an offshore account and disguised as payment for computers.

Mr. Manafort, who denied the latest allegations, has asserted that the ledger is a forgery and that the member of Parliament, Serhiy A. Leshchenko, was involved in a scheme to blackmail him. Mr. Leshchenko insists that a letter appearing to show him threatening Mr. Manafort with the release of damaging information was itself a fake, and he denies any involvement in blackmail.

The latest development unfolded against the backdrop of a congressional hearing on Monday in which the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was asked about Mr. Manafort’s work in Ukraine. Mr. Comey declined to talk specifically about Mr. Manafort or any other individuals under scrutiny in the bureau’s investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence.

Paul Manafort Quits Donald Trump’s Campaign After a Tumultuous Run AUG. 19, 2016

Ukraine Releases More Details on Payments for Trump Aide, Paul Manafort AUG. 18, 2016

Trump Campaign and Its Chief, Paul Manafort, Try to Move Past Ukraine Report AUG. 15, 2016

How Paul Manafort Wielded Power in Ukraine Before Advising Donald Trump JULY 31, 2016

Trump Aide Paul Manafort Promoted to Campaign Chairman and Chief Strategist MAY 19, 2016

Mr. Manafort worked for more than a decade for Russian-leaning political organizations in Ukraine before taking the helm of the Trump campaign over the summer. But he was pushed out after anticorruption authorities in Ukraine disclosed that Mr. Manafort may have been paid $12.7 million from an illegal slush fund maintained by his client, the Party of Regions.

A handwritten accounting document for the fund, known in Ukraine as the Black Ledger, showed entries for Mr. Manafort’s advisory work. Mr. Manafort has dismissed the ledger as fraudulent.

On Monday, Mr. Leshchenko released an invoice that he said was recovered from a safe in Mr. Manafort’s former office in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, that seems to corroborate one of the 22 entries in the ledger from 2009. The invoice billed a shell company in Belize, Neocom Systems Limited, for $750,000 for the sale of 501 computers.

Mr. Leshchenko said the invoice, along with computer disks and debit cards belonging to former employees of Mr. Manafort, was found by a tenant who rented the space last year. A signature appearing to match Mr. Manafort’s as it appears in open sources can be seen on the four-page invoice printed on Davis Manafort letterhead, with an address in Alexandria, Va.

The invoice bills Neocom Systems Limited for the computers. The invoice listed detailed specifications, for example, one as coming equipped with “Intel Core 2 Duo E6300.” The contract specifies, “Payment under the contract is performed by means of bank transfer to the account of the seller.”

This was not the first time Neocom Systems had surfaced in a corruption probe. In a 2012 money laundering and stock fraud case in Kyrgyzstan, the Central Bank listed it as a shell company used for payments by AsiaUniversalBank, a lender seized by Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank amid money laundering allegations.

Ukrainian money laundering through AsiaUniversalBank and its affiliated shell companies was extensive and “very well known” in Kyrgyzstan, Edil Baisalov, a former presidential chief of staff, said in a telephone interview. “Our country was a laundry machine.”

To Mr. Leshchenko, the payment through Neocom Systems Limited, “shows how corruption schemes work and why they should be exposed. This was corruption linked to Ukraine, and American law enforcement should investigate.”

In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Manafort, referring to the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine, dismissed Mr. Leshchenko’s allegations as “baseless, as reflected by the numerous statements from NABU officials who have questioned the validity of the so-called ledger evidence against Mr. Manafort.”

The statement continued, “Any new allegations by Serhiy Leshchenko should be seen in that light and summarily dismissed.”

Officials of NABU say they have never questioned the validity of the ledger evidence against Mr. Manafort. In fact, one corruption case has gone to court in Ukraine based on such evidence. The officials have said that their mandate is to prosecute only Ukrainian government officials.

American federal investigators are already scrutinizing Mr. Manafort’s compensation for his consulting work in Ukraine, which followed a four-decade career that included work in the United States for Republican politicians, starting with President Gerald R. Ford, and abroad for dictators, including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mr. Manafort is also one of a number of people associated with the Trump campaign whose contacts with Russians are under investigation by the F.B.I. and congressional committees into Russian meddling in the American presidential election.

Mr. Manafort has acknowledged remaining in close touch with a former office manager of his business, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, a Russian military interpreter who was investigated in Ukraine last fall over possible ties to Russian intelligence. That investigation closed without any charges. Mr. Manafort has denied knowingly contacting Russian intelligence officials during the campaign.

The ledger and the circumstances surrounding its discovery appear to factor into a bizarre incident last month when a website used by Ukrainian computer hackers released some 280,000 text messages hacked from the cellphone of one of Mr. Manafort’s daughters, Andrea.

Among those was one asking her to relay to her father a message that appeared to be from Mr. Leshchenko. The message addressed Mr. Manafort as “Honorable Count!” – a reference to an old nickname — and the writer claimed to have “bulletproof facts” regarding illicit payments to Mr. Manafort in Ukraine.

The note threatened to turn the information over to American and Ukrainian law enforcement unless Mr. Manafort found a way “to work things out.”

Mr. Manafort has said that he believes Mr. Leshchenko sent the message and was trying to blackmail him. Mr. Leshchenko has denied ever having contacted Mr. Manafort or members of his family, or seeking payments to withhold information.

With the congressional and F.B.I. investigations moving ahead, President Trump has defended Mr. Manafort’s work in Ukraine as a legitimate pursuit for a campaign adviser.

“People knew that he represented various countries, but I don’t think he represented Russia, but represented various countries,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in February. “That’s what he does. People know that. That’s Mr. Manafort, by the way, a respected man, a respected man, but I think he represented the Ukraine or Ukraine government or somebody, but everybody knew that.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/worl ... .html?_r=0


Paul Manafort just got nailed for Russian money laundering; will likely have to flip on Donald Trump
By Bill Palmer | March 21, 2017 | 0

We may now have the answer as to why Donald Trump and his White House tried to distance themselves from Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort yesterday. Manafort ran the campaign of Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, and has long been alleged to have illegally taken millions in Kremlin cash for it. But now Manafort’s signature has been discovered on Russian money laundering paperwork, all but proving his guilt – and it sets him up to flip on Trump.

The new revelation, released by the government of Ukraine and first published reported on by the New York Times, helps to confirm that Paul Manafort was indeed illegally on the take from Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. In fact, unless he can demonstrate that his signature on the newly uncovered paperwork was somehow forged to frame him, he’s essentially finished. Immediately after FBI Director James Comey and and members of the House Intelligence Committee briefly discussed Manafort during public hearings yesterday, Trump sent his spokesman Sean Spicer to the podium to try to minimize the role that Manafort played in the Trump campaign, but that effort was largely laughed off.

I took that development as a sign that that as Trump was watching the hearings, something that was said about Paul Manafort made clear to him that the FBI had Manafort nailed. And so Trump tried to claim that Manafort had only had a brief and small role in the campaign, in the hope of insulating himself. Of course Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman for much of the election cycle, meaning he was in charge of the campaign. So there’s no minimizing the ties between the two of them.

But now that we know how thoroughly screwed Paul Manafort is, it suggests that he’ll end up having to flip on Donald Trump in exchange for leniency considerations. It’s nearly a given that the FBI already knew about Manafort’s money laundering and has been privately pursuing him over it. Ukraine publicly released the evidence today (New York Times), in a seeming attempt at ratcheting up the pressure on the heels of the House hearings. No wonder Trump unsuccessfully tried to throw Manafort under the bus yesterday
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/la ... rump/2008/



According to notes of Krutskikh’s speech, he told his Russian audience: “You think we are living in 2016. No, we are living in 1948. And do you know why? Because in 1949, the Soviet Union had its first atomic bomb test. And if until that moment, the Soviet Union was trying to reach agreement with [President Harry] Truman to ban nuclear weapons, and the Americans were not taking us seriously, in 1949 everything changed and they started talking to us on an equal footing.”

Krutskikh continued, “I’m warning you: We are at the verge of having ‘something’ in the information arena, which will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals.”

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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 22, 2017 3:17 pm

Paul Manafort Tried to Help Russian Oligarch Suspected of Mob Ties Get a US Visa
This was before Trump's onetime campaign chief was hired by the Russian to boost Vladimir Putin's image.

DAVID CORNMAR. 22, 2017 2:35 PM


Olivier Douliery/AP
On Wednesday morning, the Associated Press released a bombshell report revealing that Paul Manafort, who ran Donald Trump's campaign for several months, had secretly worked for a Russian billionaire a decade ago to promote Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The news service noted that Manafort "proposed in a confidential strategy plan...that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government." Manafort pitched this idea to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally, and in 2006 signed a $10 million annual contract for the project. The AP's report shows Trump's campaign was managed by an operative who had received millions from a Putin crony to bolster the Russian leader's image in the United States at a time when US-Russia relations were tense.

Manafort's relationship with Deripaska began at least several years before they inked this contract when the Russian oligarch was banned from entering the United States due to his suspected connections to Russian organized crime. In the early 2000s, the aluminum magnate enlisted Manafort, a veteran lobbyist and fixer with a reputation for representing foreign despots and thugs, to help him secure a visa so he could travel to the United States, according to a source with knowledge of the arrangement,

In the late 1990s, the US State Department had refused to allow Deripaska (reportedly one of the richest men in Russia) visit the United States. As the Guardian reported in 2008:

A senior former State Department official said US officials who considered Deripaska's case in 1998 believed he was associated with several Russians involved in organised crime, including Anton Malevsky, head of the notorious Ismailovskaya Brotherhood. Others believed by the US authorities to be his associates were involved in the so-called Aluminium Wars during the mid-1990s which resulted in dozens of killings. Deripaska has always strenuously denied any links to organised crime.

The State Department official said: "There are four grounds that are relevant in Deripaska's case. Number three is, does this person have criminal associations and relationships? That's the one that applied to Deripaska."

In 2000, Deripaska, who was looking to list his company on the London Stock Exchange, hired former US Senator Bob Dole and the law and lobbying firm of Alston & Bird, where Dole worked, to bolster his image and lobby the State Department. Dole won permission for Deripaska to make a short trip to the United States in December 2000, and the oligarch delivered lectures at Harvard University and a Washington, DC think tank. But, according to the Guardian, Deripaska, during this visit, was "interviewed by the FBI, which led to a second ban on his entering the US."

This is about the time when Manafort began assisting Deripaska on the visa issue, according to the source with knowledge of this deal. Manafort also retained a publicity expert to generate positive stories about Deripaska, this source said.

The Deripaska visa matter continued on for years, and Deripaska kept Dole and his firm on the payroll. In 2005, Alston & Bird was paid about $260,000 for its work on behalf of Deripaska. That year, the oligarch received a multi-entry visa, in part so he could talk to FBI investigators. But in July 2006, the visa was revoked. The Wall Street Journal reported this happened after "concerns were raised about the accuracy of statements he made in a meeting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

In 2006, Manafort's business partner at the time, Rick Davis, set up meetings overseas between Sen. John McCain, a harsh Putin critic, and Deripaska. A McCain aide later said these were just "social and incidental" contacts that occurred while McCain was traveling abroad on official business.

Deripaska did get into the United States in 2009—under unusual circumstances. The Journal reported that Deripaska, who was "barred entry to the US for years due to US government concerns about possible ties to organized crime" had "visited the country twice this year under secret arrangements made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The newspaper noted:

Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska met with FBI agents in August and earlier this month as part of a continuing criminal probe, according to two administration officials. The focus of that probe couldn't be learned.

Mr. Deripaska used the opportunity of his recent US visits to meet with top executives of U.S. investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The aluminum giant he controls, UC Rusal, is preparing for an initial public offering, a vital part of Mr. Deripaska's efforts to save his debt-burdened business...

Mr. Deripaska's recent visits were arranged outside of regular State Department visa procedures because the US. continues to have concerns about Mr. Deripaska's business associations, according to administration officials. Instead, FBI officials arranged for a limited-entry permit from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as allowed in special cases related to sensitive matters, officials said.

Another person familiar with the case said there was some opposition from other US agencies to Mr. Deripaska's visits, but that the FBI prevailed. The FBI had previously been at loggerheads with the State Department over Mr. Deripaska; FBI officials have said they were getting interesting information from him, this person said.

This did not ultimately resolve the issue. In 2010, Deripaska remained banned from regular travel to the United States, and the Russian foreign ministry retained another DC lobbying firm to work on this.

The AP reported that Manafort maintained a business relationship with Deripaska until at least 2009, though "they had a falling out laid bare in 2014 in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The billionaire gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable, according to legal filings by Deripaska's representatives. It said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used." The news service also noted that "Manafort did not disclose details about the lobbying work to the Justice Department during the period the contract was in place," and it pointed out under "the Foreign Agents Registration Act, people who lobby in the US on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the department. Willfully failing to register is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, though the government rarely files criminal charges."

Manafort told AP, "I worked with Oleg Deripaska almost a decade ago representing him on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments. My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russia's political interests." Manafort did not respond to a Mother Jones request for comment regarding his work for Deripaska on the visa issue.

A spokesman for Manafort did forward a general statement Manafort had sent to reporters: "I have always publicly acknowledged that I worked for Mr. Deripaska and his company, Rusal, to advance its interests. For example, one of the projects involved supporting a referendum in Montenegro that allowed that country to choose membership in the EU, a measure that Russia opposed. I did not work for the Russian government. Once again, smear and innuendo are being used to paint a false picture. I look forward to meeting with those conducting serious investigations of these issues to discuss the actual facts."

Asked if Manafort would address his work for Deripaska on the travel visa, the spokesman replied, "I do not expect I will get an answer about something that happened 15 years ago. I apologize."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... es-gain-us
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby The Consul » Wed Mar 22, 2017 4:52 pm

I know there are some who think the Russiagate controversy is a shit show from top to bottom, a feeble distraction orchestrated by deep state dinosaurs to cling to power and attain dark purpose.

That may be.

But if Manafort is directly & legally tied to Yanukovich, he is F-U-C-K-E-D.

Yanukovic & Co. stole uppards of 100 billion from Ukraine.

Manafort went from helping manage that to.... well, managing the Trump Campaign (were it not for documents discovered in Kiev, Manafort would now be Bannon).

Now, maybe this IS all cover for the next great bottom to top motion of wealth this century. Or maybe it's something else.

But really, come on, the deep state doesn't want Trump you really think they don't have a better way of getting rid of him than this?
" Morals is the butter for those who have no bread."
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:49 am

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AP Exclusive: US probes banking of ex-Trump campaign chief
Updated March 23, 2017 9:03 AM
By The Associated Press By JACK GILLUM, MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS and ERIC TUCKER (Associated Press)

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2013, file photo. a man uses an ATM machine outside of a branch of Bank of Cyprus in capital Nicosia, Cyprus. U.S. Treasury Department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into his work in Eastern Europe, The Associated Press has learned. Information about Manafort's banking transactions was turned over to U.S. agents working in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department bureau, by the Unit for Combating Money Laundering in the Mediterranean country of Cyprus, a person familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing, global criminal investigation. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias, File) Photo Credit: AP

WASHINGTON - (AP) -- U.S. Treasury Department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into his work in Eastern Europe, The Associated Press has learned.

Information about Manafort's transactions was turned over earlier this year to U.S. agents working in the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network by investigators in Cyprus at the U.S. agency's request, a person familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss a criminal investigation.

The Cyprus attorney general, one of the country's top law enforcement officers, was made aware of the American request.

A spokesman for Manafort did not immediately respond to questions from the AP.

Manafort, who was Trump's unpaid campaign chairman from March until August last year, has been a leading focus of the U.S. government's investigation into whether Trump associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign. This week, the AP revealed his secret work for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago.

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. No U.S. criminal charges have ever been filed in the case.

It was not immediately clear what time period was covered under the government request for information about Manafort's financial transactions in Cyprus. Manafort was known to route financial transactions through Cyprus, according to records of international wire transfers obtained by the AP and public court documents filed in a 2014 legal dispute in the Cayman Islands.

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.

As part of their investigation, U.S. officials were expected to look into millions of dollars' worth of wire transfers to Manafort. In one case, the AP found that a Manafort-linked company received a $1 million payment in October 2009 from a mysterious firm through the Bank of Cyprus. The $1 million payment left the account the same day -- split in two, roughly $500,000 disbursements to accounts with no obvious owner.

There is nothing inherently illicit about using multiple companies as Manafort was doing. But it was unclear why he would have been involved with companies in Cyprus, known for its history of money laundering before joining the European Union, with unclear sources of the money flowing in to them and with such secrecy surrounding the firms' connections to Manafort.


FILE - In this July 17, 2016, file photo, then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort talks to reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. U.S. Treasury Department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving Manafort, as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into his work in Eastern Europe, The Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) Photo Credit: AP

A Treasury Department spokesman, Stephen Hudak, declined to answer the AP's questions about Manafort's records. "We often get press inquiries concerning individuals and our policy is to never confirm, nor deny the existence, or non-existence, of any potential investigation," Hudak said.

Cypriot officials said further information would have to come to the agency through a formal request to the Cypriot Ministry of Justice and Public Order -- under a mutual legal assistance treaty -- although no request has been made, according to two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

Democrats on Capitol Hill who are part of two congressional investigations of Trump associates said the new disclosures about Manafort's work for the Russian billionaire guarantee that Manafort will be sought as a key witness in upcoming hearings. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who is a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said revelations about Manafort's work were "serious and disturbing."

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."

The White House said Trump had not been aware of Manafort's work on behalf of Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006. "To suggest that the president knew who his clients were from 10 years ago is a bit insane," Press Secretary Sean Spicer said. "I don't know what he got paid to do," Spicer said, adding, "There's no suggestion he did anything improper."

Spicer declined to comment Thursday on the information about the offshore financial transactions.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, was established in 1990 and became a Treasury Department bureau soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It collects a vast repository of records that financial institutions are required to report under the Bank Secrecy Act, such as suspicious activity reports and currency transaction reports, and assists law enforcement agencies in helping analyze complex data.

The agency is a part of an international network of so-called financial intelligence units that share information with each other in money laundering and terrorism financing investigations. It's work has been critical in helping officials piece money trails together and identify leads for criminal investigators.

___

Hadjicostis reported from Nicosia, Cyprus. Associated Press writers Jeff Horwitz and Chad Day contributed to this report from Washington, and Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report from Moscow and Kyiv.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/ap-e ... 1.13304970
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:01 pm

Try as I might, I absolutely cannot keep up with the Manafort coverage on top of everything else. The volume of content on page 1 alone has to be a record with the amount of image-as-text and longform reads.

Unfortunately there's no Cliff's Notes on this one. I'm just throwing my hands up and counting it as lost intelligence.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:23 pm

Manafort will be the first to go down

and I know first hand posting about him at another site over a year ago got me bullied off because he was the key figure to taking down trump/Russian angle..and one thing I know for sure I will not be bullied off of this site by a couple other people ..not you

sorry that it is so complicated...taking down a president is hard work
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:42 pm

Who placed Manafort in the campaign?
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:45 pm

trump hired his old friend Manafort after he fired Lewandowski
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:47 pm

Directly? Damn.

Pardon the elementary-level inquiry.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:52 pm

And with the Trump campaign, not getting distracted by the clutter may prove an invaluable skill. :P

Those who know the 67-year-old Manafort give him high marks for his political skills. He helped Gerald Ford secure the 1976 nomination and later worked for Ronald Reagan. He was hired by Scott Reed, Bob Dole's campaign manager, to run the '96 convention. Reed notes Manafort has an apartment at Trump Tower in New York. But more importantly, he and Trump are peers.

Reed says Manafort is "the one person in the room that calls him Donald. It's not Mr. Trump. It's Donald. 'Come on, Donald; we've got to do the right thing here.'"

Reed says that's an important part of managing a campaign, to have a relationship with the candidate of trust. Reed says he believes Manafort "is bringing that and professionalizing the operation in a way that it needed."

Trump hired Manafort back in the '80s to lobby on gambling and real estate issues. And even though Riva Levinson had her disagreements with Manafort, she calls him "a master strategist," who can "hover above all of the moving parts, and intuitively he understands how to put them together."

Levinson says Manafort taught her how not to "get distracted from the clutter."

And with the Trump campaign, not getting distracted by the clutter may prove an invaluable skill.
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/16/486085582 ... s-campaign
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:19 pm

Russian dissident shot dead who would have been star witness in Paul Manafort trial in Ukraine
By Bill Palmer | March 23, 2017 | 0

Just one day after the full extent of former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s alleged crimes in Ukraine was publicly revealed, the Russian dissident who would have been a star witness against him has been shot to death in Kiev. Denis Voronenkov, a former elected official in Russia who fled to Ukraine and joined the resistance against Vladimir Putin, was murdered earlier today according to CNN. So what’s his connection with Manafort?
Yesterday, the government of Ukraine released evidence which confirmed the longtime rumors that Paul Manafort had been taking tens of millions of dollars in payments from a Kremlin intermediary while he was running the political campaign of Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. Yanukovych was elected president before ultimately being chased out of the country by the Ukrainian people.
Denis Voronenkov was helping Ukraine build a treason case against Yanukovych, but they were never going to be able to get him back from Russia in order to put him on trial. In contrast, the government of Ukraine has become increasingly vocal about wanting to put Paul Manafort on trial for his financial crimes in relation to in installing Yanukovych into power. In addition, Ukraine recently stated its intention to go after Manafort for the deaths of several Ukrainian protester; Manafort’s own daughter alleges the deaths were arranged by Manafort for Yanukovych’s political gain.
Considering the extent to which the FBI is investigating Paul Manafort for his alleged criminal collusion with Russia to rig the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor, and the mounting evidence against him, it seems likely that he’ll have to answer for his crimes in the United States one way or the other. But if Ukraine decides to separately try Manafort, Denis Voronenkov would have been a key witness. And because Voronenkov spent time in Russian parliament, he could have used the trial to air out Putin’s most corrupt secrets in the process.
So his murder today (source: CNN) may help Putin, but it probably doesn’t help Manafort. Voronenkov’s murder makes him the tenth prominent Russian to die suspiciously during the course of the Trump-Russia scandal.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/russia ... aine/2033/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 23, 2017 7:27 pm

oh man oh man oh man I forgot about this

Paul Manafort tricked Trump into switching from Christie to Pence by faking airplane malfunction
David Edwards DAVID EDWARDS
30 OCT 2016 AT 16:13 ET

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, reportedly bamboozled his boss into switching his vice presidential pick from embattled New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) by staging an airplane malfunction.

In July, The New York Times reported that Trump and Pence “impromptu dinner” after the GOP candidate’s plane was grounded by “mechanical problems.”

“And at some point during the evening, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Pence if he would say yes, were Mr. Trump to offer him the No. 2 slot,” according to the Times.

But a Sunday report in the New York Post revealed that Manafort took the dramatic step of lying to Trump about mechanical problems with the plane after his boss tentatively selected Christie for the V.P. slot.

“Trump had wanted Christie but Bridgegate would have been the biggest national story,” Trump source told the Post. “He’d lose the advantage of not being corrupt.”

Manafort left the campaign in August after question arose about his business ties with Russia.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/paul-ma ... lfunction/



so may.....be this has happened....this would be lovely :P

Mike Pence appears to be the “Donald Trump transition team” member caught on wiretap
By Bill Palmer | March 23, 2017 | 0

This week House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes got his hands on some kind of classified intelligence through unofficial channels, and it spooked him to the point that he broke every protocol – and may have broken his career in the process. Nunes insists someone on the Donald Trump transition team was legally picked up on a wiretap that was targeted at someone else. And it appears the person incidentally surveilled was Vice President Mike Pence.
Based on Nunes’ description, someone on the Trump transition team was picked up while speaking on the phone with someone who was the subject of a FISA warrant. Widespread media reports have long pegged four people in the Trump campaign’s orbit as being under FBI investigation: Michael Flynn, Carter Page, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort. These are the four who could realistically have been the subject of a judge-issued FISA surveillance warrant.
Of the four men, the only one who is known to have had phone conversations with anyone on the Trump transition team during the transition was Manafort. And the one person Manafort kept calling? Mike Pence (source: Daily Kos. The two have long been aligned; Manafort went to great lengths to ensure Pence was Trump’s running mate. So it appears that Devin Nunes learned this week that Pence had been caught saying something disconcerting on Manafort’s wiretap. And that may explain why Nunes did what he did from there.
It’s not a secret that most Republicans in Congress, including Speaker Paul Ryan, view themselves as being more closely aligned with establishment Republican Mike Pence than with erratic outsider Donald Trump. So if Nunes came across evidence of Pence on a wiretap, it might explain why his first move was to panic and run to Ryan for advice. It would also explain why Nunes was of the belief that Trump himself might not have been aware of it, and felt compelled to take it to him.
This still doesn’t answer the questions of who leaked the classified information to Nunes, or why, or whether Nunes knew at the time who the real source was, or if he’s since figured it out. It appears someone was manipulating him as a useful idiot. But now the more immediate question may be what Mike Pence kept discussing with Russian puppet Paul Manafort during the transition, and if it implicated Pence in Trump’s Russia scandal. We don’t know that answer yet, but the FBI does
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/mi ... etap/2036/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Mar 23, 2017 7:57 pm

Manafort made Pence the VP, they talked regularly during the transition
By bejammin075
Wednesday Mar 22, 2017

Image
"I'm STILL working for Putin"

Given the recent revelations about Paul Manafort, I thought this would be good to bring to everyone’s attention. Mike Pence is the Vice President because of Paul Manafort’s effort. During the transition period, Manafort was apparently talking regularly on the phone with Mike Pence, especially about personnel choices.

CBS News October 30th: Donald Trump offered Chris Christie vice president role before Mike Pence, sources say

Manafort had arranged for Trump to meet with his [Manafort’s] first choice for the job on July 13: Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Afterwards, the plan was for Trump and Pence to then fly back to New York together and a formal announcement would be made, a campaign source said of Manafort’s thinking.

What had previously been reported as a “lucky break” by the New York Times was actually a swift political maneuver devised by the now fired campaign manager. Set on changing Trump’s mind, he concocted a story that Trump’s plane had mechanical problems, forcing the soon-to-be Republican nominee to stay the night in Indianapolis for breakfast with the Pence family on Wednesday morning.

Swayed by Pence’s aggressive pitch, Trump agreed to ditch Christie and make Pence his VP the following day, according to a source.


Daily Beast, November 30th "Paul Manafort Is Back and Advising Donald Trump on Cabinet Picks"

According to two sources with knowledge of the Trump presidential transition process, Manafort—whose formal association with the president-elect ended in August—is heavily involved with the staffing of the nascent administration.



“I think he’s weighing in on everything,” the former official said, “I think he still talks to Trump every day. I mean, Pence? That was all Manafort. Pence is on the phone with Manafort regularly.”




Another Trump campaign source who worked alongside Manafort confirmed to The Daily Beast that he is heavily involved in selecting the incoming administration’s “personnel picks.”


Good god. Are we going to end up with....President Paul Ryan?! Pass the popcorn.
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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Mar 23, 2017 8:42 pm

What's the endgame with this fantasy?

Let's say the private lobbyist (which by definition almost means "corrupt") Paul Manafort is exposed in tapes as of June 2016 taking millions directly from Putin and agreeing that this will be in exchange for running the Trump campaign as a cut-out of the FSB. Let's say you have the receipts.

Manafort was bounced out of the Trump campaign because it failed miserably. The Mercers moved in with their money and the campaign was taken over by their agents, Bannon and Conway, who now appear to run the White House (if not the "administration" exactly) with Jared and Ivanka.

What has been achieved? Do you understand that proving anything about Manafort does nothing to stop the Trump regime? Whatever it is, it is deniable. Meanwhile, the Mercers are the sponsors of the Trump regime and Bannon is in the policy driver's seat. You want to see them displaced, or you want to spin more fantasies about all-powerful Russia?

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Re: Paul Manafort

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:14 pm

first of all Manafort was fired very quietly by trump because of the Ukrainian ledger popping up that had his name on it ....$12.5 million dollars

at the Senate Intel Hearings trumps taxes are going to be outed

trump may be booted for that or his dealings with Russian mobsters

btw another foe of Putin was murdered today Denis Voronenkov ..could have been star witness in Paul Manafort trial in Ukraine

and this happened yesterday

Russian dissident being thrown out of fourth story window

As we reported yesterday, Gorokhov was set to testify today in defense of Sergei Magnitsky, a political activist who was murdered by the Russian government in 2009. Putin is putting on the posthumous show-trial in an apparent attempt at smearing Magnitsky’s legacy, in order to make it easier for Donald Trump to get the Magnitsky Act repealed – which would generate billions in profits for the Kremlin. In addition Gorokhov was a star witness in a Russian corruption probe led by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whom Trump just fired.



Manafort is gone, but his business associate remains a key part of Trump’s operation
By Tom Hamburger March 22 at 8:34 PM
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.

But even as Trump officials downplay Manafort’s role, his ­decade-long business associate Rick Gates remains entrenched in the president’s operation. Gates is one of four people leading a Trump-blessed group that defends the president’s agenda. As recently as last week, he was at the White House to meet with officials as part of that work.

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.

Manafort has acknowledged the contract with Deripaska but denied that it, or any other of their dealings, had anything to do with the Russian government. In a brief interview, Gates described his work as being focused on “supporting the private equity fund started by the firm and democracy building and party building in Ukraine.”

Gates also acknowledged a role in at least two recent, controversial deals involving separate Putin-connected oligarchs, including one other with Deripaska. Both led to lawsuits in which Gates was listed as a partner to Manafort, though Gates said he holds no equity interest in the firm.

Four controversial figures Paul Manafort did business with Play Video1:40
As a lobbyist and political consultant in the 1980s, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with clients that included two dictators. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Potential connections between Trump’s associates and the Russian government gained renewed interest this week after FBI Director James B. Comey publicly confirmed Monday that his agency is actively investigating whether there was collusion between the two sides. Manafort and Gates said they had not been contacted by the FBI or any other law enforcement agency.

Gates and Manafort are two of many Trump associates with connections to Russia, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn; Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser; and Roger Stone, a Trump ally who claimed to have communicated indirectly with WikiLeaks before emails hacked by Russian agents were published last summer. All have denied any wrongdoing and said their alleged ties to Russia are being exaggerated to undermine the president.

Manafort’s role in potential dealings with Russia gained new attention Wednesday when the AP reported that Manafort proposed in 2005 a plan to influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government. Gates did not join the firm until the following year.

Manafort said Wednesday that his work for Deripaska was designed to benefit the Russian business executive’s company, Rusal, not the Russian government.

“I have always publicly acknowledged that I worked for Mr. Deripaska and his company,” Manafort said in a statement Wednesday. “I did not work for the Russian government. Once again, smear and innuendo are being used to paint a false picture.”

Asked about the AP report at his daily briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday, “Nothing in this morning’s report references any actions by the president, the White House or any Trump administration official.”

In the mid-1990s, Manafort and Richard H. Davis, a longtime Republican political consultant, formed Davis Manafort. Gates joined the firm in 2006.

Paul Manafort talks with Trump campaign staff following the results of the Indiana state primary at Trump Tower in Manhattan May 3, 2016. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
That year, the firm wooed Deripaska as a client, telling him that their goal was to set up a $200 million fund to make a series of private equity investments and acquisitions, primarily in Russia and Ukraine, according to documents in the lawsuit. The partnership making the investments was created in the Cayman Islands in 2007.

By 2014, relations between Manafort and Gates and Derispaska had soured considerably.

That year, Gates and Manafort were sued by Deripaska, who accused them in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments, then failing to account for the funds, return them or respond to numerous inquiries about exactly how the money was used.

At one point, attorneys for Deripaska claimed that they could not locate Manafort or Gates. The Russian tycoon hired a private investigator to track them down, according to a 2014 petition that Deripaska’s attorneys filed in a Cayman Islands court seeking recovery of the money.

“It appears that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have simply disappeared,” the petition stated.

A spokeswoman for Deripaska issued a statement Wednesday in Moscow indicating that the suit may still be pending. Vera Kurochkina, the spokeswoman, said that Deripaska did not pay Manafort for Russia-related work but instead paid him for investment consulting that is “the subject of legal claims.”

Manafort’s attorney, Richard Hibey, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the status of the Cayman Islands dispute.

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Deripaska’s ties to Putin are so close that Russia’s foreign minister has asked U.S. secretary of states for more than a decade to help Deripaska secure a visa to enter the United States. According to a 2007 account in the Wall Street Journal, Deripaska had been denied admission by the Justice Department because of alleged ties to organized crime.

As recently as 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry for assistance in getting a visa for the aluminum magnate.

In 2014, Manafort and Gates were also named in a different lawsuit alleging that they were helping a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmitry Firtash, who has ties to Putin. In attempting to put together an $850 million deal to build luxury housing on the site of the Drake Hotel in New York City, the legal complaint alleged, Manafort and Gates were investing ill-gotten gains Firtash received for an energy deal he had done with a Russian firm. That lawsuit was dismissed.

During that same time, Manafort and Gates were active in Washington promoting the policy priorities of the political party of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia after violent street protests against him broke out in Kiev in late 2014. Between 2012 and 2014, Gates arranged introductions for two Washington lobbying firms — the Podesta Group and Mercury LLC — to represent the European Center for a Modern Ukraine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 8982678eb8
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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