EARLY REPORT -- UKRAINE AND MANAFORT
COMPILED BY LUCY MANESS WARNER
AUGUST 15, 2016 AT 12:36 PM


I SUPPOSE MANAFORT WILL TAKE THE BLAME AND TRUMP WILL BE HIS DUPE? DENIABILITY, YOU KNOW!

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/elections-2016-trump-campaign-chair-paul-manafort-pro-russian-ukraine-party-ties-new-york-times/

Report: Pro-Russian party earmarked $12.7M in cash for Trump campaign chair
CBS NEWS
August 15, 2016, 7:18 AM

Play VIDEO -- Campaign chair denies financial relationship between Trump and Russia
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There are new accusations about Donald Trump's campaign chairman and his ties to alleged corruption in Ukraine. The New York Times is out with a report showing Paul Manafort may have received more than $12 million in "undisclosed cash payments" from a pro-Russian political party while a consultant in Ukraine from 2007 to 2012.

Manafort denies he got any such payment, stating: "I have never received a single 'off-the-books cash payment' as falsely 'reported' by The New York Times, nor have I ever done work for the governments of Ukraine or Russia. Further, all of the political payments directed to me were for my entire political team: campaign staff (local and international), polling and research, election integrity and television advertising."

The report comes as Trump has ramped up his anti-media rhetoric, writing on Twitter Sunday: "It is not 'freedom of the press' when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!"

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Manafort's ties to Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine, are well documented, reports CBS News correspondent Major Garrett. But the new details about the amount of money designated for Manafort by Yanukovych's political allies are likely to amplify Trump's claims that he's facing a biased media.

According to the report, $12.7 million was earmarked for Manafort by Yanukovych's pro-Russian political party. That's according to a so-called "black ledger" analyzed by Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators who believe it documents "an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials."

As Trump prepares to deliver a major speech on terrorism in Ohio Monday, the Clinton campaign called the news "troubling," adding Trump "has a responsibility to disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort's and all other campaign employees' and advisers' ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump's employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them."

The report provides more ammunition for Trump's ongoing clash with the New York Times.

"We have a newspaper that's failing badly. ... Real garbage. They're garbage. It's a garbage paper," Trump said Saturday at a rally in Fairfield, Connecticut. "Maybe we'll start thinking about taking their press credentials away from them."

Beyond the media bashing, Trump is setting up another excuse for losing: voter fraud.

"The only way we can lose, in my opinion, I really mean this, Pennsylvania, is if cheating goes on. I really believe it," Trump said at a rally last Friday.

A recent investigation found just 31 credible cases of voter fraud in over one billion ballots cast nationwide between 2000 and 2014. Still Trump called for volunteer election monitors.

"Go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it's 100 percent fine," he said in Pennsylvania.

Trump's claims hold little water in Pennsylvania, a state where Democrats have won in six straight presidential elections and where there are nearly one million more registered Democrats than Republicans. His campaign will try to reset the conversation once again Monday when Trump lays out his plan to fight global terrorism at Youngstown State University in Ohio.



THIS NYT ARTICLE IS WHAT TRUMP DOESN’T WANT US TO READ, AND I CAN SEE WHY!


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
By ANDREW E. KRAMER, MIKE McINTIRE and BARRY MEIER
AUG. 14, 2016

Photo -- Visitors at Mr. Yanukovych’s estate in Kiev, which was abandoned in 2014. Credit Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images
Photo -- A page from the “black ledger,” released by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. This page does not include Mr. Manafort’s name.
Photo -- Anti-corruption groups in Ukraine said the black ledger detailing payments was probably seized when protesters ransacked the Party of Regions headquarters in February 2014. Credit Oleg Petrasyuk/European Pressphoto Agency
Presidential Election 2016 -- The latest news and analysis of the candidates and issues shaping the presidential race. Donald Trump to Lay Out ‘3 Pillars’ of Terrorism Plan, Aides Say, AUG 15
Photo -- Vladimir V. Putin, left, then Russia’s prime minister, in 2008 with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close ally. Credit Pool photo by Ilia Pitalev
Photograph -- Paul Manafort, Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, ran a political consulting operation out of a first-floor office on Sofiivska Street in Kiev, Ukraine. Credit Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
Photo -- A helicopter pad on a building in central Kiev was built when Mr. Yanukovych was president. Credit Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
Photograph -- Hand-written ledgers show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from the pro-Russian political party of Viktor F. Yanukovych. Mr. Manafort did not receive “any such cash payments,” his lawyer said. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times


KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.

And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.

“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”

Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”

Mr. Manafort did not respond to interview requests or written questions from The New York Times. But his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials.

Mr. Hibey also disputed Mr. Kasko’s suggestion that Mr. Manafort might have countenanced corruption or been involved with people who took part in illegal activities.

“These are suspicions, and probably heavily politically tinged ones,” said Mr. Hibey, a member of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier. “It is difficult to respect any kind of allegation of the sort being made here to smear someone when there is no proof and we deny there ever could be such proof.”

Mysterious Payments

The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.

Before he fled to Russia two years ago, Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions relied heavily on the advice of Mr. Manafort and his firm, who helped them win several elections. During that period, Mr. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the United States Justice Department — as required of those seeking to influence American policy on behalf of foreign clients — although one of his subcontractors did.

It is unclear if Mr. Manafort’s activities necessitated registering. If they were limited to advising the Party of Regions in Ukraine, he probably would not have had to. But he also worked to burnish his client’s image in the West and helped Mr. Yanukovych’s administration draft a report defending its prosecution of his chief rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in 2012.

Whatever the case, absent a registration — which requires disclosure of how much the registrant is being paid and by whom — Mr. Manafort’s compensation has remained a mystery. However, a cache of documents discovered after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government may provide some answers.

The papers, known in Ukraine as the “black ledger,” are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a “wad of cash” for a trip to Europe.

“This was our cash,” he said, adding that he had left the party in part over concerns about off-the-books activity. “They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.”

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records, and the signatures for receipt have not yet been verified.

“Paul Manafort is among those names on the list of so-called ‘black accounts of the Party of Regions,’ which the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating,” the statement said. “We emphasize that the presence of P. Manafort’s name in the list does not mean that he actually got the money, because the signatures that appear in the column of recipients could belong to other people.”

The accounting records surfaced this year, when Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who said he had received a partial copy from a source he did not identify, published line items covering six months of outlays in 2012 totaling $66 million. In an interview, Mr. Leshchenko said another source had provided the entire multiyear ledger to Viktor M. Trepak, a former deputy director of the domestic intelligence agency of Ukraine, the S.B.U., who passed it to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.

The bureau, whose government funding is mandated under American and European Union aid programs and which has an evidence-sharing agreement with the F.B.I., has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only if it passes its findings to prosecutors — which has not happened with Mr. Manafort — does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case.

Individual disbursements reflected in the ledgers ranged from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars. Of the records released from 2012, one shows a payment of $67,000 for a watch and another of $8.4 million to the owner of an advertising agency for campaign work for the party before elections that year.

“It’s a very vivid example of how political parties are financed in Ukraine,” said Daria N. Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev. “It represents the very dirty cash economy in Ukraine.”

Offshore Companies

While working in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort had also positioned himself to profit from business deals that benefited from connections he had gained through his political consulting. One of them, according to court filings, involved a network of offshore companies that government investigators and independent journalists in Ukraine have said was used to launder public money and assets purportedly stolen by cronies of the government.

The network comprised shell companies whose ultimate owners were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.

In a recent interview, Serhiy V. Gorbatyuk, Ukraine’s special prosecutor for high-level corruption cases, pointed to an open file on his desk containing paperwork for one of the shell companies, Milltown Corporate Services Ltd., which played a central role in the state’s purchase of two oil derricks for $785 million, or about double what they were said to be worth.

“This,” he said, “was an offshore used often by Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage.”

The role of the offshore companies in business dealings involving Mr. Manafort came to light because of court filings in the Cayman Islands and in a federal court in Virginia related to an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets. Mr. Manafort and several partners started the fund in 2007, and its major backer was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian mogul, to whom the State Department has refused to issue a visa, apparently because of allegations linking him to Russian organized crime, a charge he has denied.

Mr. Deripaska agreed to commit as much as $100 million to Pericles so it could buy assets in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including a regional cable television and communications company called Black Sea Cable. But corporate records and court filings show that it was hardly a straightforward transaction.

The Black Sea Cable assets were controlled by a rotating cast of offshore companies that led back to the Yanukovych network, including, at various times, Milltown Corporate Services and two other companies well known to law enforcement officials, Monohold A.G. and Intrahold A.G. Those two companies won inflated contracts with a state-run agricultural company, and also acquired a business center in Kiev with a helicopter pad on the roof that would ease Mr. Yanukovych’s commute from his country estate to the presidential offices.

A Disputed Investment

Mr. Deripaska would later say he invested $18.9 million in Pericles in 2008 to complete the acquisition of Black Sea Cable. But the planned purchase — including the question of who ended up with the Black Sea assets — has since become the subject of a dispute between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort.

In 2014, Mr. Deripaska filed a legal action in a Cayman Islands court seeking to recover his investment in Pericles, which is now defunct. He also said he had paid about $7.3 million in management fees to the fund over two years. Mr. Deripaska did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Mr. Hibey, disputed the account of the Black Sea Cable deal contained in Mr. Deripaska’s Cayman filings, and said the Russian oligarch had overseen details of the final transaction involving the acquisition. He denied that Mr. Manafort had received management fees from Pericles during its operation, but said that one of Mr. Manafort’s partners, Rick Gates, who is also working on the Trump campaign, had received a “nominal” sum.

Court papers indicate that Pericles’ only deal involved Black Sea Cable.

Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.

At Mr. Manafort’s old office on Sofiivska Street, new tenants said they had discovered several curiosities apparently left behind, including a knee X-ray signed by Mr. Yanukovych, possibly referring to tennis matches played between Mr. Manafort and Mr. Yanukovych, who had spoken publicly of a knee ailment affecting his game.

There was another item with Mr. Yanukovych’s autograph: a piece of white paper bearing a rough sketch of Independence Square, the site of the 2014 uprising that drove him from power.

Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kiev, and Mike McIntire and Barry Meier from New York. Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Washington.

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.

“Paul Manafort is among those names on the list of so-called ‘black accounts of the Party of Regions,’ which the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating,” the statement said. “We emphasize that the presence of P. Manafort’s name in the list does not mean that he actually got the money, because the signatures that appear in the column of recipients could belong to other people.”

The accounting records surfaced this year, when Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who said he had received a partial copy from a source he did not identify, published line items covering six months of outlays in 2012 totaling $66 million. In an interview, Mr. Leshchenko said another source had provided the entire multiyear ledger to Viktor M. Trepak, a former deputy director of the domestic intelligence agency of Ukraine, the S.B.U., who passed it to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.

The bureau, whose government funding is mandated under American and European Union aid programs and which has an evidence-sharing agreement with the F.B.I., has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only if it passes its findings to prosecutors — which has not happened with Mr. Manafort — does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case.

Individual disbursements reflected in the ledgers ranged from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars. Of the records released from 2012, one shows a payment of $67,000 for a watch and another of $8.4 million to the owner of an advertising agency for campaign work for the party before elections that year.

“It’s a very vivid example of how political parties are financed in Ukraine,” said Daria N. Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev. “It represents the very dirty cash economy in Ukraine.”

Offshore Companies

While working in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort had also positioned himself to profit from business deals that benefited from connections he had gained through his political consulting. One of them, according to court filings, involved a network of offshore companies that government investigators and independent journalists in Ukraine have said was used to launder public money and assets purportedly stolen by cronies of the government.

The network comprised shell companies whose ultimate owners were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.

In a recent interview, Serhiy V. Gorbatyuk, Ukraine’s special prosecutor for high-level corruption cases, pointed to an open file on his desk containing paperwork for one of the shell companies, Milltown Corporate Services Ltd., which played a central role in the state’s purchase of two oil derricks for $785 million, or about double what they were said to be worth.

“This,” he said, “was an offshore used often by Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage.”

The role of the offshore companies in business dealings involving Mr. Manafort came to light because of court filings in the Cayman Islands and in a federal court in Virginia related to an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets. Mr. Manafort and several partners started the fund in 2007, and its major backer was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian mogul, to whom the State Department has refused to issue a visa, apparently because of allegations linking him to Russian organized crime, a charge he has denied.

Mr. Deripaska agreed to commit as much as $100 million to Pericles so it could buy assets in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including a regional cable television and communications company called Black Sea Cable. But corporate records and court filings show that it was hardly a straightforward transaction.

The Black Sea Cable assets were controlled by a rotating cast of offshore companies that led back to the Yanukovych network, including, at various times, Milltown Corporate Services and two other companies well known to law enforcement officials, Monohold A.G. and Intrahold A.G. Those two companies won inflated contracts with a state-run agricultural company, and also acquired a business center in Kiev with a helicopter pad on the roof that would ease Mr. Yanukovych’s commute from his country estate to the presidential offices.

A Disputed Investment

Mr. Deripaska would later say he invested $18.9 million in Pericles in 2008 to complete the acquisition of Black Sea Cable. But the planned purchase — including the question of who ended up with the Black Sea assets — has since become the subject of a dispute between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort.

In 2014, Mr. Deripaska filed a legal action in a Cayman Islands court seeking to recover his investment in Pericles, which is now defunct. He also said he had paid about $7.3 million in management fees to the fund over two years. Mr. Deripaska did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Mr. Hibey, disputed the account of the Black Sea Cable deal contained in Mr. Deripaska’s Cayman filings, and said the Russian oligarch had overseen details of the final transaction involving the acquisition. He denied that Mr. Manafort had received management fees from Pericles during its operation, but said that one of Mr. Manafort’s partners, Rick Gates, who is also working on the Trump campaign, had received a “nominal” sum.

Court papers indicate that Pericles’ only deal involved Black Sea Cable.

Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.

At Mr. Manafort’s old office on Sofiivska Street, new tenants said they had discovered several curiosities apparently left behind, including a knee X-ray signed by Mr. Yanukovych, possibly referring to tennis matches played between Mr. Manafort and Mr. Yanukovych, who had spoken publicly of a knee ailment affecting his game.

There was another item with Mr. Yanukovych’s autograph: a piece of white paper bearing a rough sketch of Independence Square, the site of the 2014 uprising that drove him from power.


Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kiev, and Mike McIntire and Barry Meier from New York. Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Washington.

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on August 15, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Trump Aide. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe


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RECENT COMMENTS


Jeff Just now
Gee what a surprise; Manafort's crooked. As is the rest of Trump's campaign. Will will this guy just go away? (Trump that is)

Jed Just now
Always happy to see real journalism uncovering facts vs. the punditocracy that pervades everything. Manafort has to go, as does Trump. ...

WillyD Just now
If Trump's "patriotic" followers are truly that, they should abandon him in droves based on this revelation and it would be the final nail...

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Regions

Party of Regions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Party of Regions (Ukrainian: Партія регіонів, pronounced [ˈpɑrtijɑ rɛɦiˈɔniu̯]; Russian: Партия регионов) is a centrist Russophile[12][13] political party of Ukraine created in late 1997 that then grew to be the biggest party of Ukraine. But since the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution the party has not competed in elections and since most of its representatives have left the party to continue their careers in other parties.[14][15] Best known former party members are former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.[16] Both fled to Russia in February 2014.[17]

The party was created on 26 October 1997, just prior to the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, under the name of Party of Regional Revival of Ukraine[18] and led by Volodymyr Rybak. Throughout its existence the party has contained different political groups with diverging ideological outlooks.[5][6][7]

The party was reorganized later in 2001 when it united with several others. According to the party’s leadership in 2002, from the creation of the party to the end of 2001 the number of members jumped from 30,000 to 500,000.[19] The party claims to ideologically defend and uphold the rights of ethnic Russians and speakers of the Russian language in Ukraine. It originally supported president Leonid Kuchma and joined the pro-government For United Ukraine alliance during the parliamentary elections on 30 March 2002.

Its electoral and financial base has always been located primarily in the east and south-east of Ukraine, where it got wide popular electoral support.[20] In the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast the party claimed in 2010 to have over 700,000 members. The party was always supported mostly by people older than 45 years.[20]

The party won 185 seats in the Ukrainian parliament in the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[21] On 12 December 2012 it formed a parliamentary faction of 210 deputies.[22]

During the 2014 Ukrainian revolution on February 20, 2014, several party members called for the disintegration of Ukraine and a union with the Russian Federation. Oleksandr Yefremov, leader of the Ukrainian parliamentary faction in full support of these proposed actions,[23] and Vladimir Konstantinov, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea went to Luhansk to support these decisive actons.[24] On 23 February 2014 the Party of Regions condemned and disassociated itself from Victor Yanukovych for corruption, "criminal orders", his escape, and "cowardice".[25] The following months more than 120 MPs left the party's parliamentary faction.[22][26][27]

The party did not participate in the 2014 parliamentary elections.[14][28] In the following months, the majority of its representatives continued their political careers predominantly with Opposition Bloc, Revival or Our Land.[15][29]