The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has recently filed a lawsuit against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for $3 million over allegedly failing to disclose offshore accounts.
The lawsuit, which authorities filed on Thursday, accused Manafort of "willful failure to timely report his financial interest in foreign bank accounts." They argued that he failed to report more than 20 offshore accounts between 2006 and 2014.
Paul Manafort's Offshore Accounts
Furthermore, prosecutors alleged that the former Trump campaign chairman failed to file the necessary reports of foreign bank and financial accounts in 2013 and 2014. Officials from the DOJ said that Manafort's firm at the time, DMP International, had income directly deposited into accounts in Cyprus, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines, as well as the United Kingdom.
Authorities filed the lawsuit against Manafort in West Palm Beach, Florida, and came after he was previously sentenced to more than seven years in prison in 2018. At the time, he was given tax and bank fraud charges but former President Donald Trump pardoned him in December 2020, as per The Hill.
In a statement, Manafort's attorney, Jeffrey Neiman, said that the civil lawsuit sought a money judgment against his client for simply failing to file a tax form. He said that the former Trump campaign chairman was fully aware that the federal government was only filing the suit because he tried to resolve the civil matter for months now.
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The DOJ's lawsuit against Manafort notes that the Treasury Department had sent the official notice of its assessment of the penalties in July of 2020. His former charges stemmed from former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
According to ABC News, prosecutors allegedly argue that former President Trump's pardon of Manafort encompasses his failure to file Foreign Bank Account reports in 2013 and 2014. The accused briefly ran the Republican businessman's campaign in 2016 before he was ousted amid questions about his consulting work for Ukrainian political figures that made him millions of dollars.
Money Laundering Charges
Manafort pleaded guilty to money laundering and obstruction after he was convicted by a jury of using foreign accounts to hide the proceeds of his Ukrainian consulting. He is known to have been a successful GOP consultant for several years, working on the presidential campaigns of various high-profile individuals, including Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office obtained a grand jury indictment in 2019 against Manafort on fraud charges that echoed the federal case. The situation came amid concerns that Trump was planning to pardon his former adviser, which he later did. A New York State judge threw out the case and said that it violated state laws against double jeopardy, the Washington Post reported.
The situation is only one of many financial and legal controversies that former President Trump is facing ahead of the midterm elections. One of which is the legal battle that is haunting the Trump Organization for allegedly making fraudulent valuations of its assets to incur smaller taxes, Yahoo News reported.
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