Corruption investigators in Ukraine say an illegal, off-the-books payment network earmarked $12.7 million in cash payments for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort, The New York Times reported on Monday.
It is not clear if Mr. Manafort actually received any of the money designated for him from 2007 to 2012 while working as a consultant for pro-Russia former President Viktor Yanukovych’s party, The Times said.
Mr. Manafort issued a statement vehemently denying any wrongdoing. “The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, nonsensical and silly,” the statement says, according to NBC News.
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Mr. Manafort’s name appears 22 times in 400 pages of handwritten Cyrillic taken from ledgers found at the headquarters of Mr. Yanukovych’s Regions Party,
The ledgers were obtained by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators say the network was used to raid Ukrainian assets and influence elections while Mr. Yanukovych was in power.
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Mr. Yanukovych was ousted in a 2014 pro-Western revolt, after which Russia seized the Crimean peninsula, fuelling a separatist uprising in the country’s east which has claimed some 9,500 lives.
The Times said investigators are also probing a group of offshore companies that helped people close to him finance lavish lifestyles.
One was a cable TV deal involving a partnership assembled by Mr. Manafort and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the newspaper reported. Mr. Manafort is not a focus of this separate probe.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign, meanwhile, deplored the “troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine”.
In a statement, the campaign demanded that Mr. Trump disclose Mr. Manafort’s ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, given Mr. Trump’s “pro-Putin policy stances” and “the recent Russian government hacking and disclosure of Democratic Party records”. — AFP