Millions under honest word

Manafort and Deripaska: new sensational details of the financial ties of the American political strategist and Russian oligarch

Paul Manafort. Photo: Flickr.com / Conecta ABOGADOS

The American media finding out more and more details about the relationship between the former head of the election headquarters Donald Trump, the famous political strategist and businessman Paul Manafort and the Russian oligarch, the head of Rusala Oleg Deripaska. In September-October The Washington Post, Atlantic and NBC found and released in several publications a correspondence between Manafort and Deripaska in the midst of Trump’s presidential campaign and financial documents, from which American and Russian businessmen could have joint affairs for tens of millions of dollars.

* Paul Manafort left the post of head of Trump’s election campaign in August 2016, three months before the election, due to suspicions of financial crimes. In March 2017, a representative of Deripaska confirmed that the businessman worked together with Manafort at one time.

According to the latest publication, at the end of last week, the American television company NBC, firms related to Manafort, led a “billionaire with close ties with the Kremlin”, $ 26 million. If Paul Manafort were not associated with Trump’s election headquarters, this NBC news would be unnoticed. But Manafort was still connected with Trump's headquarters, and now he is a key object of investigation regarding the alleged conspiracy of the Trump surroundings with the Kremlin. Therefore, the news NBC produced a well -known splash, although it did not contain anything fundamentally new.

"We are at his disposal"

In mid -September, The Washington Post reported that “two weeks before Donald Trump officially became a chosen (candidate) of the Republican Party for the presidency of the United States ( this happened at the Republican Congress on July 19, 2016. - NT), the head of his headquarters proposed to regularly report on the progress of the Russian oligarch, who is a close alien Kremlin ".

Oleg Deripaska was meant, to whom Manafort allegedly addressed such a proposal through Konstantin Kilimnik , a former military translator who had long worked with an American in Kiev-in Ukraine, Manafort worked in the 2000s in the 2000s, worked as a political consultant of the Party of Regions and ex-president Viktor Yanukovych.

As Manafort wrote on July 7, 2016, a kilimnik in one of the tens of thousands of Imilov, who in the summer of 2017 at the disposal of the US Congress and the employees of the special prosecutor Robert Muller , investigating Trump’s environment with Russia, “if he (Deripaska) needs private briefings, we are at his disposal.”

The Washington Post, however, admitted that she had no idea whether this proposal came to Deripaska, and whether he informed his manfort about the course of the US election at least once.

Oleg Deripaska. Photo: deripaska.ru

Soon after, someone leaked the indicated correspondence between Manafort and Kilimnik magazine magazine-a large article on this topic was published in the journal on October 2.

As the authors of the article explain, Manafort was in debt at that moment, worked at Trump’s headquarters on a voluntary basis and therefore tried to use his proximity to him in order to get closer to Deripaska, who had not yet dispersed him, but also sued him into the Kaiman Islands.

According to the authors of the article in Atlantic, in 2007, Manafort and its partners founded a fund for investment in Ukraine. According to the request submitted in 2014 on the Kaiman Islands by Deripaska’s lawyers, the founders of the Fund received more than $ 7 million from the firms controlled by the Russian oligarch for managing the fund. So, in 2008, Deripaska, according to the petition, transferred $ 18.9 million to the fund for the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecommunication company. The further fate of this money is unclear.

The petition of Deripaska’s lawyers also said that when the oligarch asked in 2013, so that Manafort reported him about the fate of this investment, he did not answer him. As Deripaska’s lawyers wrote, "it seems that Paul Manafort and (his deputy) Rick Gates simply disappeared."

The representative of Manafort for the ties of the press Jason Maloni said that he was not to blame for anything and that the incident was exhausted. The last document, bent to the case on the Kaiman Islands, dates back to 2015.

“Two weeks before Donald Trump officially became a candidate from the Republican Party for the presidency of the United States, the head of his headquarters proposed to regularly report on the progress of the election race to the Russian oligarch, who is a close ally of the Kremlin”

Under the first request

In 2016, the financial problems of Manafort forced him to take $ 16 million under his real estate in New York, the authors of the article in Atlantic write. As evolves from the documents obtained by NBC television in Cyprus, Oguster Management Ltd. Transferred by the $ 26 million Cyprus company Yiakora Ventures Ltd, related to Manafort. This amount should be returned at the first request.

NBC also reports a smaller loan in some $ 7 million, provided by OGUSTER of another Manafort company-Loav Advisers Ltd.-the first in July 2017 was reported by The New York Times. The loan, in turn, clarifies NBC, was provided honestly.

Finally, according to the NBC investigation, the above Cypriot companies Manafort led $ 27 million of his third companies - Jesand LLC, registered in Delaware. The name of the company, obviously, comes from the names of the daughters of Manafort - Jessica and Andrei.

Whether these loans were repaid - unclear, significantly notes NBC.

Loan or laundering?

The representative of Manafort for relations with the press Jason Maloni refused to answer questions about these loans in detail, but sent a NBC statement that stated that "today Manafort owed nothing to his former customers, as he had not been at the time when he began to work at Trump's headquarters."

“Money launders often mask payments as loans. You can call them loans, you can call them Mary Jane. If there is no intention to return them, then these are not loans. These are just payments "

Maloni clearly aimed himself to refute the assumption that, being the head of the Trump headquarters and at the same time as a debtor of Deripaska, Manafort could enter into a conspiracy with him. The irony is that, judging by the correspondence of Manafort with a kilimnik, the American was ready to serve the Russian “private briefings” about the course of the campaign in the United States. Critics of Manafort, of course, can interpret this as his attempt to enter into a conspiracy with the Russian oligarch.

Since Deripaska, as far as is known, did not respond to last year's entrances Manafort, the NBC puts forward a reserve hypothesis that can throw a shadow on the former head of the Trumpovsky headquarters, and at the same time on Trump himself.

The television company hints that donkey ears of money laundering stick out from the above loans, and cites the words of the former federal prosecutor Stefan Kassella that “money launders often mask payments as loans. You can call them loans, you can call them Mary Jane. If there is no intention to return them, then these are not loans. These are just payments. ”