THE KING'S CREATOR, THE FALL OF PAUL MANAFORT


Paul J. Manafort, among other, is a well-known American political consultant who has quite dubious clients in his resume, such as the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the African dictator Mobutu Sese Seco and Siad Barre, the dictator of Somalia. But only cooperation with Ukrainian politics has brought him a personal collapse.

Back in 2004, Donetsk oligarchic-mafia group - who sought to come to power in Ukraine - decided to hire a "foreign specialist." Then Manafort failed to brought Viktor Yanukovich to the presidential post, but after two years such an internationa cooperation had given its result. The Partia Regioniv (PR) won the elections to the Verchovna Rada. 

Manafort had continued to work fruitfully with the "Donetsk group." And if ouy thhing he worked within the PR's campaign HQ - you are wrong, everithing was much serious. The head of the electoral headquarters had been personally reporting to Manfort.

Such a fruitful work, of course, should have been successful. In 2010, by hook or by crook Yanukovich's team had managed to pull him into the presidental chair. At the inauguration Akhmetov and Manafort were hugging and cissing for joy.

Obviously, the events of the Winter Revolution were not a bolt from the blue for Manafort. Moreover, he already had such experience. Mobutu escaped from Congo. Marcos was driven out by revolution to Hawaii. And Seyad Barre spent the last years of his life in Nigeria, where he hid from the Somali rebels. But, since none of them paid as much as the "regionals," Manafort decided to remain in Ukraine and then continue with the PR campaign for the Donetsk group, which now only made a slight political rebrending from the Partia Regioniv (which by taht time was a political corpse) to the Opositsinij Block (Oposition Block) without shanging its pro-Russian orientation.

In 2014, Manaforth again surpassed itself, namely - he pulled 40 members of newly formed political formation. Key point is that he managed to pull it off immediately after the revolution, which, it would seem, rose up against these same people. True professional!

In 2016, an election campaign in the United States started, and Manafort - being tired swimming in a paddling pool of Ukrainian politicians - had decided to return to the real issues that promised better prospects. In March, Manafort heads the Donald Trump Election Headquarters. But in this post he does not hold on for a long time. Already in August, the American press publishes data from the revealed "black cash" department of the Party of Regions, which shows that in the period from 2007 to 2012, Manaforth had received from nearly $ 13 million in cash from Yanukovych, Achmetov and Co. 

At the same time, Manafort did not report on his lobbying activities in favor of pro-Russian political projects Ukraine, and according to US law, he committed a serious crime. Expectently, the American political lobbyist had refused to recognize the fact of receiving money Yanucovich's "black accounts," but in order not affect Trump's election campaign, he left post of the elections campaign HQ head, which was later occupied by such a remarkable person as Stephen Bennon. 

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine stated that it would be difficult to prove that it was Manafort who had received this money, because in "'the recipient' column are the signatures of other people." The FBI, unfortunately or fortunately, did not stop this unfortunate fact.

On Monday, October 30, 2017, Paul Manafort personally came to the FBI's Washington office to give up. After all, there is no sense to deny the proven fact of a crime. 

The charges list includes 12 points, among them: interference with the US government activities, money laundering, non-payment of taxes, fraud, etc. Along with Manaforth, his friend and business partner, Richard Gates, has been charged.

In order to hide the financial incomes Manafort and Gates had used quite a popular ways of money laundering - offshores in Cyprus, Seychelles, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. For this business they had 32 offshore companies in the US and abroad. They spent these things on understandable things, such as a house for $ 3 million in cash or a condominium in the elite neighborhood of New York for 2.8 million, as well as child education, mortgages and other things of that sort. In total, $ 75 million went through offshore accounts and 21 of them were washed away.

Apparently, Manafort learned all this in Ukraine. There are plenty similar examples all-over the post-Soviet area. If that happened in Ukraine under current circumstances, Manafort most probably could manage to get away with it. Only for laundering money he is promised a prison sentence of up to 20 years.The general term could be up to 80 years.

Paul Manafort's track record is impressive. His firm was among the tops of the list of "bleachers" of the image of dictators and corrupt officials. According to various calculations, Ferdinand Marcos took with him from 5 to 10 billion dollars when he fled from Philippines. Mobutu Sese Seco had robbed the budget of Congo for $ 10 billion. Siad Barré in the power struggle destroyed entire cities and villages with peaceful populations.

But only Ukraine has become stumbling block for 68-year-old Paul Manafort, who has been doing his job since 1976...

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