Trump campaign manager’s Ukrainian clients have Panama Papers connections
Source: Fusion
Trump campaign manager’s Ukrainian clients have Panama Papers connections
7/22/16 4:40 PM
By Adam Weinstein and Laura Juncadella
GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump sent shudders through US foreign policy circles and the international community this week, when he suggested that, as president, he might not fulfill America’s promises to defend NATO members against a Russian attack. That departure from historical American policies, and Republican wisdom, came days after the Trump campaign reportedly softened the GOP platform’s hardline stance against pro-Russian rebels fighting to control Ukraine.
Those moves were less surprising to critics of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who for more than a decade has cultivated business ties to pro-Russian politicians and industrialists in Ukraine.
Now, Fusion has learned that the names of several of Manafort’s connections appear in shell company records from the notorious Panama Papers and the Offshore Leaks, troves of information on offshore companies unearthed in recent years by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
From Washington to Kiev
After several fairly conventional decades in conservative American politics, Manafort won headlines in 2007 for his paid work rebranding former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych and his “Party of Regions” as mild-mannered reformers. That was no small feat for Yanukovych, a Ukrainian politician who had been described by the New York Times‘s Kiev reporter as “a divisive figure reviled by some here as a shady reactionary and Kremlin pawn,” and who was driven from power in 2005 amid allegations he’d tried to rig his re-election with Russian help. (His election opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, fell ill due to poisoning during the campaign — a mystery that still goes unsolved.)
Read more: http://fusion.net/story/328264/paul-manafort-trump-campaign-panama-papers-connection/
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