A brazen, greedy criminal for whom breaking the law was part of his routine — this was the portrait of Paul Manafort, former lobbyist of Ukraine’s fugitive ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, drawn by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in its two sentencing memos issued on Feb. 15 and Feb. 23.
Manafort’s double sentencing should take place next month. The trial in Washington, D.C., where he and his right-hand man Richard Gates were indicted for conspiracy and illegal lobbying for Ukraine, is scheduled for March 13. The date of the trial in Virginia, where he was indicted for financial crimes, has not yet been set.
Manafort faces between 19 to 25 years in prison for money laundering and tax evasion, and life imprisonment for conspiracy against the United States during his work for Ukraine’s former government between 2006 and 2015.
Manafort, also a former campaign chair for U.S. President Donald Trump, has not been charged in relation to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. According to CNN, Manafort’s defense lawyers used this fact to emphasize that Mueller didn’t have evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“For over a decade, Manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law,” Mueller’s team wrote in one memo. “His crimes continued up through the time he was first indicted in October 2017 and remarkably went unabated even after indictment.”
“Manafort’s criminal conduct was serious, longstanding, and bold,” Mueller’s team wrote in another memo. “His criminal decisions were not momentary or limited in time; they were routine.”
Manafort, who turns 70 in April, will most likely end his life in prison. While Mueller’s office didn’t ask for a specific sentence for him, it recommended a punishment harsh enough to deter others from committing similar crimes.
Manafort’s age isn’t a mitigating factor and doesn’t guarantee he won’t commit crimes again, Mueller’s team wrote. They pointed at Manafort’s criminal history spanning for over a decade, and the fact that Manafort continued to lie to the U.S. government and tried to tamper with witnesses after he had already been indicted in Virginia and the District of Columbia.
In June 2018, Manafort and his associate, Russian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik, were accused of interfering with the investigation as they tried to convince two witnesses to lie about Manafort’s work for Ukraine.
In August 2018, a grand jury in Virginia convicted Manafort on eight counts of bank fraud, tax fraud, and failure to report overseas accounts. A month later, Manafort pleaded guilty to financial crimes and agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Mueller.
While the first memo released by Mueller’s office on Feb. 15 largely focused on Manafort’s financial crimes, the redacted version of the second memo published on Feb. 23 detailed Manafort’s illegal lobbying for Ukraine’s ex-President Yanukovych and his Party of Regions and obstruction of justice.
Last week, Bloomberg and the New York Times reported that the Manhattan district attorney had prepared new criminal charges against Manafort in case he gets pardoned by his former boss, President Trump.
Ukraine work
The Mueller memos, once again, paint a staggering picture of the scale of Manafort’s defrauding of both the American and Ukrainian people.
Between 2006 and 2015, acting as an agent for Yanukovych and his now disbanded Party of Regions, Manafort led the “Engage Ukraine” lobbying campaign, which had the aim of misleading the U.S. government about the Ukrainian government.
Manafort concealed the tens of millions of dollars that he was paid by Yanukovych for this in unreported offshore accounts in Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the United Kingdom. More specifically, Manafort held over $55 million in multiple currencies in 31 overseas bank accounts.
Neither did he report over $16 million in income, and he failed to pay taxes of $6 million for five consecutive years. In addition, he defrauded three American banks where he sought five loans of over $25 million.
“These were not short-lived schemes. Manafort’s crimes were the product of his planning and premeditation over many years, and a result of his direct and willful conduct,” Mueller’s team wrote in the memo. “Manafort did not commit these crimes out of necessity or hardship but simple greed. He was well educated, professionally successful, and financially well off.”
Manafort spent the money on paying U.S. firms he had hired to help him in his lobbying work for Ukraine and on luxury purchases such as real estate, designer suits, and home improvements to houses in Bridgehampton, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among many others.
Besides imprisonment, Manafort faces a fine for up to $24.3 million and will have to pay a restitution of $24.8 million. The state will confiscate $4.4 million.
Yanukovych was eventually ousted from power in 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution and recently sentenced in absentia to 13 years for state treason.
In two years before Yanukovych’s ouster, Manafort hired a number of firms and people to engage in his lobbying campaign in the U.S. on behalf of Yanukovych and paid them over $11 million through offshore accounts. He didn’t register as an agent for a foreign government with the U.S. Department of Justice as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) required, and advised those who worked for him not to do so either.
Two D.C.-based lobbying firms, the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs were contracted to arrange meetings with members of Congress, and officials from the White House and U.S. Department of State.
The law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom was commissioned to write a purportedly independent report justifying the trial of the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Skadden recently agreed to register retroactively as a foreign agent under FARA and repay the U.S. Treasury the $4.6 million that it had received for its work for Ukraine.
Manafort and his associates established a non-governmental organization in Brussels called the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, which was run by Party of Regions members and Ukrainian government officials.
Manafort also engaged the Hapsburg Group, a group of four European politicians, to provide a purportedly independent, positive assessment of the Ukrainian government’s work, when in fact they were paid by that government. They were former Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski, former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and a former president of the European Parliament Patrick Cox.
Both Gusenbauer and Prodi have denied knowing that the money they were paid had come from Manafort.
The court documents and trial testimony showed that Manafort’s work in Ukraine was financed by six Ukrainian oligarchs and public officials, including Rinat Akhmetov, Serhiy Lovochkin, and Dmytro Firtash.
