Why Manafort is even more of a crook than you thought
This delicious detail from the indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort secured by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team went practically unnoticed — until now:
The indictment (PDF), unsealed on Monday, includes an extensive look into Paul Manafort’s byzantine financial dealings. In particular, it details how he used a company called Lucicle Consultants Limited to wire millions of dollars into the United States.
The Cyprus-based Lucicle Consultants Limited, in turn, reportedly received millions of dollars from a businessman and Ukrainian parliamentarian named Ivan Fursin, who is closely linked to one of Russia’s most notorious criminals: Semion Mogilevich.
Mogilevich is frequently described as “the most dangerous mobster in the world.” Currently believed to be safe in Moscow, he is, according to the FBI, responsible for weapons trafficking, contract killings, and international prostitution. In 2009, he made the bureau’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
“Ivan Fursin was a senior figure in the Mogilevich criminal organization,” Taras Kuzio, a non-resident fellow at Johns Hopkins-SAIS’ Center for Transatlantic Relations and a specialist on the region told The Daily Beast. Fursin, he added, was a “senior figure” in Mogilevich’s criminal group.
In July, Vanity Fair’s Abigail Tracy dug up this nugget of incrimination:
… Manafort—who retroactively registered as a foreign agent last month for his lobbying work—owed $7.8 million to a company connected to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Manafort also owed a separate sum of $9.9 million to a Cyprus company linked to Ivan Fursin, a Party of Regions member of the Ukrainian Parliament, through a Delaware-based LLC that he previously used to purchase real estate in New York City…
