Treasury department agents received information about the former Trump campaign chairman`s offshore transactions, a source tells the AP.
U.S. treasury department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving Donald Trump`s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as part of a federal anti-corruption investigation into his work in eastern Europe, the Associated Press has learned, according to The Guardian.
Information about Manafort`s transactions was turned over earlier this year to U.S. agents working in the treasury department`s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network by investigators in Cyprus at the U.S. agency`s request, a person familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss a criminal investigation.
The Cyprus attorney general, one of the country`s top law enforcement officers, was made aware of the American request.
See also: Manafort wanted for questioning in Ukraine corruption case
Federal prosecutors became interested in Manafort`s activities years ago as part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukrainian assets after the ouster of the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, there in early 2014. No US criminal charges have ever been filed in the case.
It was not immediately clear what time period was covered under the government request for information about Manafort`s financial transactions in Cyprus. Manafort was known to route financial transactions through Cyprus, according to records of international wire transfers obtained by the AP and public court documents filed in a 2014 legal dispute in the Cayman Islands.
In the 2014 case, Manafort used Cypriot shell companies as part of a nearly $19m deal with the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to purchase the Ukrainian cable television provider Black Sea Cable. Deripaska said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska`s queries about how the funds had been used.
As part of their investigation, US officials were expected to look into millions of dollars` worth of wire transfers to Manafort. In one case, the AP found that a Manafort-linked company had received a $1 million payment in October 2009 from a mysterious firm through the Bank of Cyprus. The $1 million payment left the account the same day – split in two, roughly $500,000 disbursements to accounts with no obvious owner.
There is nothing inherently illicit about using multiple companies as Manafort was doing. But it was unclear why he would have been involved with companies in Cyprus, known for its history of money laundering before joining the European Union, with unclear sources of the money flowing into them and with such secrecy surrounding the firms` connections to Manafort.
The AP`s reporting about Manafort`s activities ”undermines the groundless assertions that the administration has been making that there are no ties between President Trump and Russia. This is not a drip, drip, drip,” said the Democratic Jackie Speier of California, a member of the House intelligence committee. ”This is now dam-breaking with water flushing out with all kinds of entanglements.”
