Paul Manafort Is Under Investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department

In February, multiple news outlets reported that Paul Manafort’s daughter appears to have been the victim of a cyber attack that exposed a blackmail attempt on Manafort while he was serving as Donald Trump’s campaign chairman.
 
The texts show that Ukrainian lawmaker Sergei Leschenko claimed to have evidence of Manafort’s business dealings with ousted Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych, and of a meeting between Trump and Yanukovych associate Serhiy Tulub.  

(Photo Credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images )
 
Now Manafort has a new scandal to worry about. The Associated Press reported exclusively Thursday that agents of the Treasury Department have obtained information relating to Manafort’s transactions at the Bank of Cyprus, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The Treasury Department is pursuing an investigation into corruption Manafort may have been involved with in Ukraine.
 
Paul Manafort worked as campaign chairman for the Trump campaign from March until August of 2016. He was instrumental in shepherding the candidate through the critical time before, during, and after the Republican National Convention. He has also been a focus of the FBI investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign and administration coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential campaign.
 
Manafort, active in the campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole, has also lobbied on behalf of many dictators around the world. He has worked for guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi of Angola, Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and Viktor Yanukovych, Russian-backed former leader of Ukraine.
 
Federal prosecutors have been interested in Manafort’s finances since it was discovered that a ledger belonging to Yanukovych contained an entry showing he had made secret payments to Manafort. The payments appear to have been made in 2009.
 
Cyprus is known to have been a haven for money laundering by Russian billionaires.

Manafort is not the only Trump team member with ties to the Bank of Cyprus. According to The Guardian, Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary, presided over a deal with Artem Avetisyan, a Russian banker with ties to Vladimir Putin and Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, in 2015. At the time, Sberbank was under U.S. and European Union sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
 
The Associated Press story about the investigation into Manafort’s connections to the Bank of Cyprus can be found here.
https://www.apnews.com/d43ef4166da6400ab45140978854bbbb

The Guardian article about connections of Wilbur Ross to deals with Russia and the Bank of Cyprus can be found here.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/23/wilbur-ross-russian-deal-bank-of-cyprus-donald-trump-commerce-secretary
                                          
 The article from Politico from February, describing the cyberattack on Manafort’s daughter, can be found here.
 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/paul-manafort-blackmail-russia-trump-235275

A clip from 1989 in which Paul Manafort admits to influence peddling during an investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/archival-video-1989-paul-manafort-admits-influence-pedaling-38310079

 A Politico article detailing Manafort's ties to Ukraine and to Moscow can be found here.
http://www.politifact.com/global-news/article/2016/may/02/paul-manafort-donald-trumps-top-adviser-and-his-ti/

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