Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was pressured by an ex-Russian intelligence officer to pay down millions of dollars in debt owed to a Kremlin-linked billionaire, according to a report.
Victor Boyarkin, a former arms dealer, told Time in an article published Saturday that he “came down … hard” on Manafort at the direction of Russian mining and metals magnate Oleg Deripaska so he could collect about $19 million lost in, among other avenues, a failed business deal in Ukraine. That number comes from court documents made in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands.
“He owed us a lot of money. And he was offering ways to pay it back,” Boyarkin, who has been contacted by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of the federal Russia investigation and was included on a Dec. 19 U.S. sanctions list, told Time.
Manafort, who worked for the Trump campaign between March and August 2016, reportedly emailed Deripaska several times that spring and summer to propose “private briefings” on the then-candidate to “get whole.” The emails were reported by the Atlantic and the Washington Post last year, but Boyarkin’s role as debt collector was not clear.
Manafort told reporters in 2017 when the emails were revealed that he had “always publicly acknowledged” his relationship with Deripaska, particularly their 2006 collaboration in Montenegro helping the country become an independent state.
“For example, one of the projects involved supporting a referendum in Montenegro that allowed that country to choose membership in the EU, a measure that Russia opposed,” Manafort said in a statement last year.
Time reported Saturday that, following his departure from the Trump campaign in 2016, Manafort met with pro-Russian Montenegrin opposition figure Nebojsa Medojevic to discuss a possible partnership ahead of a vote that year on whether the small Balkan nation should join NATO. Medojevic told the outlet the meeting was not productive and no agreement was struck. Medojevic is currently on trial for his involvement in a foiled coup plot backed by Russia.
Mueller accused Manafort in November of breaking his plea deal reached in September by misleading the FBI and the special counsel’s team. Manafort’s alleged violation puts at risk a 10-year cap on prison time resulting from the Virginia and Washington-based cases mounted against him. Those matters emanated from Mueller’s probe. He is due to be sentenced in February.
