Attorneys working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe said Monday that they were having trouble determining the value of Paul Manafort’s assets, and in court filings posted Tuesday night, the government went into more detail about the wide variations in claims Manafort has allegedly made about his net worth.
In the last two years, the estimates Manafort has listed of his assets on various applications have ranged from $25 million to $136 million, according to the filing. In a single month — August 2016 — Manafort listed his assets as $63 million on one application and as $28 million on another, the government alleged.
The filing was part of the case that the Special Counsel’s office has mounted against Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign, that includes charges of money laundering and failure to comply with lobbying disclosure laws. The court document argued that Manafort poses a flight risk due to “the serious nature of the charges,” his “history of deceptive and misleading conduct,” and his “significant financial resources,” among other reasons.
On Monday, when Manafort appeared at the U.S. District Courthouse for the District of Columbia after turning himself in, an attorney for the government, Greg Andres, said that prosecutors were having a “difficult time ascertaining the assets” of Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates, who was also charged in the indictment.
Asked by TPM about the alleged variations in Manafort’s claims about his assets, his spokesman Jason Maloni said, “Paul Manafort entered a plea of not guilty … in response to the indictment and he … looks forward to having these allegations tried before a judge and jury.”
Gates, the government said in the new filing, estimated on a February 2016 application that he and his wife had a net worth of $30 million, while on March 2016 application, he listed their total assets to be approximately $2.6 million.
A footnote in the filing adds that Gates has allegedly “frequently changed banks and opened and closed bank accounts.”
Manafort and Gates are scheduled to appear back in court Thursday afternoon, where the conditions of their release are expected to be discussed.
