Trump associate Paul Manafort laundered a $750,000 payment through Belize.

[alexw]

If I remember correctly it was @Skoe who said that the Trump-Russia issue had lots more shoes to drop. Well here is one. Just after the Comey hearing yesterday a Ukrainian lawmaker released documents indicating Paul Manafort laundered payments to himself through a Belize front company. Payments that came from a Russia backed Ukrainian politician currently in hiding in Russia. This ties in with the way the Trump white house is currently trying to distance itself from Paul Manafort by downplaying his prior role in their pre-election campaign. Oh soooo much smoke.....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/w...ons-trump.html

KIEV, Ukraine — After his name surfaced last August in a secret ledger listing millions of dollars in payments from a pro-Russian party in Ukraine, Paul Manafort not only lost his job running Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign but also assumed center stage in a bizarre internecine struggle among Ukrainian political forces.

On Monday, the intrigue took another turn, when a member of Parliament in Ukraine released documents that he said showed that Mr. Manafort took steps to hide the payments, which were tied to Mr. Manafort’s work for former President Viktor F. Yanukovych. The documents included an invoice that appeared to show $750,000 funneled through an offshore account and disguised as payment for computers.

Mr. Manafort, who denied the latest allegations, has asserted that the ledger is a forgery and that the member of Parliament, Serhiy A. Leshchenko, was involved in a scheme to blackmail him. Mr. Leshchenko insists that a letter appearing to show him threatening Mr. Manafort with the release of damaging information was itself a fake, and he denies any involvement in blackmail.

The latest development unfolded against the backdrop of a congressional hearing on Monday in which the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was asked about Mr. Manafort’s work in Ukraine. Mr. Comey declined to talk specifically about Mr. Manafort or any other individuals under scrutiny in the bureau’s investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence.
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Mr. Manafort worked for more than a decade for Russian-leaning political organizations in Ukraine before taking the helm of the Trump campaign over the summer. But he was pushed out after anticorruption authorities in Ukraine disclosed that Mr. Manafort may have been paid $12.7 million from an illegal slush fund maintained by his client, the Party of Regions.

A handwritten accounting document for the fund, known in Ukraine as the Black Ledger, showed entries for Mr. Manafort’s advisory work. Mr. Manafort has dismissed the ledger as fraudulent.

On Monday, Mr. Leshchenko released an invoice that he said was recovered from a safe in Mr. Manafort’s former office in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, that seems to corroborate one of the 22 entries in the ledger from 2009. The invoice billed a shell company in Belize, Neocom Systems Limited, for $750,000 for the sale of 501 computers.

Mr. Leshchenko said the invoice, along with computer disks and debit cards belonging to former employees of Mr. Manafort, was found by a tenant who rented the space last year. A signature appearing to match Mr. Manafort’s as it appears in open sources can be seen on the four-page invoice printed on Davis Manafort letterhead, with an address in Alexandria, Va.

The invoice bills Neocom Systems Limited for the computers. The invoice listed detailed specifications, for example, one as coming equipped with “Intel Core 2 Duo E6300.” The contract specifies, “Payment under the contract is performed by means of bank transfer to the account of the seller.”

This was not the first time Neocom Systems had surfaced in a corruption probe. In a 2012 money laundering and stock fraud case in Kyrgyzstan, the Central Bank listed it as a shell company used for payments by AsiaUniversalBank, a lender seized by Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank amid money laundering allegations.

Ukrainian money laundering through AsiaUniversalBank and its affiliated shell companies was extensive and “very well known” in Kyrgyzstan, Edil Baisalov, a former presidential chief of staff, said in a telephone interview. “Our country was a laundry machine.”

To Mr. Leshchenko, the payment through Neocom Systems Limited, “shows how corruption schemes work and why they should be exposed. This was corruption linked to Ukraine, and American law enforcement should investigate.”

In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Manafort, referring to the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine, dismissed Mr. Leshchenko’s allegations as “baseless, as reflected by the numerous statements from NABU officials who have questioned the validity of the so-called ledger evidence against Mr. Manafort.”

The statement continued, “Any new allegations by Serhiy Leshchenko should be seen in that light and summarily dismissed.”

Officials of NABU say they have never questioned the validity of the ledger evidence against Mr. Manafort. In fact, one corruption case has gone to court in Ukraine based on such evidence. The officials have said that their mandate is to prosecute only Ukrainian government officials.

American federal investigators are already scrutinizing Mr. Manafort’s compensation for his consulting work in Ukraine, which followed a four-decade career that included work in the United States for Republican politicians, starting with President Gerald R. Ford, and abroad for dictators, including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

[Belize]

Whoa, hey, wait I got nothing to do with that, say.

Myah.

[Azadina]

Whoa, hey, wait I got nothing to do with that, say.

Myah.

Shoulda known it was some forum users fault!

"lock him up!" "lock him up!"

[Puupi]

Whoa, hey, wait I got nothing to do with that, say.

Myah.

You criminal embezzling scum!

[Belize]

Shoulda known it was some forum users fault!

"lock him up!" "lock him up!"

You'll never take me alive, copper!

[Deleted]

and whats wrong with that ? better than muslims, gays and jews founding you

[Nadiru]

So, let me get this straight: A guy who Trump fired when he wasn't President did something bad seven years before Trump was running for President, and before Trump knew him. And this is supposed to...splash onto Trump? Could you run the math on this by me again? Fourier transforms aren't my strong suit.

[Cthulhu 2020]

You'll never take me alive, copper!

Batman always takes them alive though. And never uses guns!

[alexw]

So, let me get this straight: A guy who Trump fired when he wasn't President did something bad seven years before Trump was running for President, and before Trump knew him. And this is supposed to...splash onto Trump? Could you run the math on this by me again? Fourier transforms aren't my strong suit.

?????


Don't you mean a man Trump hired as his campaign manager engaged in corruption, but whom he has consistently defended even to this day despite that corruption? Yes that shows poorly on Trump.

“People knew that he represented various countries, but I don’t think he represented Russia, but represented various countries,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in February. “That’s what he does. People know that. That’s Mr. Manafort, by the way, a respected man, a respected man, but I think he represented the Ukraine or Ukraine government or somebody, but everybody knew that.”

[Flarelaine]

This is not a bang, it's a whimper. There had better be more where this came from to make an impact.

[melodramocracy]

It's just a cowinsudense! Hilary dun worse!

[Kalcheus]

It's ok, Spicer told us yesterday that Manafort had a "limited role" as campaign chairman.

[Vizardlorde]

Whoa, hey, wait I got nothing to do with that, say.

Myah.

I always suspected you were up to no good.

[zenkai]

Whoa, hey, wait I got nothing to do with that, say.

Myah.

I will make sure the NSA keeps a closer eye on you.

[Glorious Leader]

It's ok, Spicer told us yesterday that Manafort had a "limited role" as campaign chairman.

That was the best. He ran the fucking campaign for fucks sakes...

[melodramocracy]

That was the best. He ran the fucking campaign for fucks sakes...

I love how Spicer has the continual habit of cutting questions short so he can give a completely unrelated answer, then scold the reporter when he / she tries to finish her question.

Media should huddle prior to one of these, and simply have everyone repeat the same question until they get a proper answer

[PACOX]

Batman always takes them alive though. And never uses guns!

Unless you're the Batman cancelling Ben Affleck, then theres enough bullets to go around!

[cubby]

This is not a bang, it's a whimper. There had better be more where this came from to make an impact.

There will be. There is. Many whimpers together make a bang - and there have been dozens already.

[Halicia]

"If the President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal"

How long til Spicer starts quoting a certain ex-president ?