Follow the money, Manafort edition
Buzzfeed reports that the FBI has questions about thirteen wire transfers involving Paul Manafort…
… in which offshore companies linked to Manafort moved more than $3 million all over the globe between 2012 and 2013.
Much of the money came into the United States.
These transactions — which have not been previously reported — drew the attention of federal law enforcement officials as far back as 2012, when they began to examine wire transfers to determine if Manafort hid money from tax authorities or helped the Ukrainian regime close to Russian President Vladimir Putin launder some of the millions it plundered through corrupt dealings.
Manafort has been engaging in the offshore money moving game for over a decade:
Bank officers flagged unusual behavior among five offshore companies that authorities say are associated with Manafort: Global Endeavour Inc., Lucicle Consultants Ltd., and three others that appear to have no current contact information.
Law enforcement sources say the companies sent funds in round-dollar amounts without explanation of what the money was to be used for. The countries where these transactions originated — notably Cyprus and the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines — are notorious for money laundering. Federal law enforcement officials said they saw evidence of “layering,” the process by which the origin of money is obscured behind many layers of companies. Much of the money ended up in the US, sent to American home improvement contractors, a hedge fund, and even a car dealership.
Manafort’s suspicious financial transactions were first flagged by Treasury officials as far back as 2012 and forwarded to the FBI’s International Corruption Unit and the Department of Justice for further investigation in 2013 and 2014, a former Treasury official who worked on the matter told BuzzFeed News. The extent of Manafort’s suspicious transactions was so vast, said this former official, that law enforcement agents drafted a series of “intelligence reports” about Manafort’s financial dealings. Two law enforcement officials who worked on the case say that they found red flags in his banking records going back as far as 2004, and that the transactions in question totaled many millions of dollars.
One of our favorite tweeps, Eric Garland, points out an overt tie to the Kremlin mentioned in the article that deserves a bit of highlighting:
OH LOOK, WHOA. Manafort transferred money to Konstantin Kiliminic, GRU operative tied to Oleg Deripaska. pic.twitter.com/sSV7oPgqgl
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) October 29, 2017
AH, so then you transfer money from St. Vincent (which came from…Ukraine? Narnia?) And fix up real estate in Brooklyn with it! pic.twitter.com/xzSqJNarWt
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) October 29, 2017
Sorry, I mean you transfer the money in, but then you DON’T fix up the place in Brooklyn.
And the rest? F’ed if I know. #FinCENFkd pic.twitter.com/8CTCTmzKHn
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) October 29, 2017
And that could be a yuuuuuge problem for Comrade Manafort. You have to wonder how both Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin feel about the truth trickling out…
