(Headline USA) Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle a civil case filed by the Justice Department over undeclared foreign bank accounts.
When the civil case was filed in April 2022, prosecutors alleged that Manafort had failed to disclose more than 20 offshore bank accounts he ordered opened in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The government sought an order for Manafort to pay fines, penalties and interest, alleging he had failed to file federal tax documents detailing the accounts and failed to disclose the money on his income tax returns.
The government said false tax returns were filed from 2006-2015 and that the Treasury Department had notified Manafort of the fines and assessment in July 2020.
The settlement was detailed in court documents filed Feb. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The case may be significant as conservative investigators and Hunter Biden’s own laptop have revealed that the Biden family itself may be using offshore accounts to conceal many of its foreign business entanglements.
Like Hunter Biden, who is currently under grand-jury investigation for a series of financial crimes and possibly criminal felonies, Manafort was accused of failing to register as a foreign agent when conducting business deals in Ukraine.
As a result, the former Trump campaign adviser faced criminal charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, for which Trump himself was ultimately exonerated. He pardoned Manafort and other victims of the probe before leaving office.
A jury convicted Manafort in 2018 of eight financial crimes, including several related to his political consulting work in Ukraine, but the judge hearing the case declared a mistrial on 10 other counts when jurors could not reach a verdict.
Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison prior to receiving his pardon in late 2020.
Manafort’s ties to Ukraine led to his ouster from Trump’s campaign in August 2016, less than a month after Trump accepted the Republican nomination.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
