A forensic accountant with the Federal Bureau of Investigation took the stand Wednesday and testified how money flowed from overseas bank accounts controlled by Paul Manafort to the U.S. to pay expenses for luxury clothing, high-end cars, and property.
[Related: Federal prosecutors paint Manafort as person who lied to support life of luxury]
In what was the seventh day of the Manafort trial, FBI forensic accountant Morgan Magionos told the court she was able to trace the former Trump campaign manager’s financial activities overseas through bank records, account opening statements, and wires, some of which were obtained from foreign and domestic banks and others obtained through a subpoena.
Magionos said she identified 15 entities that were tied to foreign bank accounts located in Cyprus, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the United Kingdom. Some of those entities had more than one account associated with it.
During the course of her analysis, Magionos discussed charts she created that showed the foreign source of Manafort’s money and the overseas bank accounts that received those funds. She told the court the money came from foreign entities that paid Manafort and his firm, Davis Manafort Partners International, for political consulting work in Ukraine.
In 2010, Magionos said foreign bank accounts controlled by Manafort received $9.4 million from the Ukraine-related entities. They received $11.4 million in 2011 and $31.5 million in 2012, the most of any year. In 2013, her analysis found Manafort’s foreign bank accounts received $13.8 million from the Ukraine-tied entities.
In total, the analysis by Magionos showed Manafort brought in more than $60 million for his work in Ukraine from 2010 to 2013.
Federal prosecutors allege Manafort hid millions of dollars he made for his political consulting work in Ukraine in overseas accounts and underreported his income to the Internal Revenue Service.
In addition to identifying the source of funds coming into Manafort’s offshore accounts, she also traced the aggregate maximum value of those accounts from 2010 to 2014.
The values range from $5.4 million in 2010 to $2.7 million in 2012 and $18.7 million in 2013.
[More: Here’s a full wrap of Gates’ testimony in Manafort trial]
Prosecutors have sought to connect the income for his Ukraine work they say Manafort never reported to payments for luxury goods and services, and last week the 12-member jury heard from a variety of U.S. vendors who listed Manafort as a client. The vendors said they often received payments for Manafort’s expenses by wire transfers from international accounts.
Magionos told the court she traced the payments to those vendors as well as the purchases of two properties in New York City and a third in Arlington, Va., which were also made using money Manafort kept in offshore accounts from 2010 to 2014.
According to Magionos, the total of payments to U.S. vendors and for real property from Manafort’s overseas accounts was $1.6 million in 2010, $1.4 million in 2011, $9.2 million in 2012, $2.8 million in 2013, and $429,933 in 2014.
In analyzing the payments to high-end vendors, such as Alan Couture, a luxury men’s clothing store in New York City, and a Mercedes Benz dealer in Alexandria, Magionos found that in some cases, payments from overseas accounts made up the bulk of Manafort’s payments to the vendors.
From 2010 to 2014, for example, total invoices to Manafort from SP&C Home Improvement, a New York-based home improvement company, were $3.2 million. Payments from foreign bank accounts Manafort controlled to SP&C Home Improvement, meanwhile, totaled $3.5 million.
It’s unclear why payments from foreign accounts were larger than the total amount billed to Manafort.
Magionos also used emails between Manafort and a Cyprus-based law firm to demonstrate that it was Manafort who directed the transfers from his accounts. In a September 2010 email shown to jurors, Manafort requested seven wire transfers from Yiakora Ventures Limited, a Cyprus-based entity he described as “my account.” Among those seven transfers was a request for $31,500 to be sent to SP&C.
Magionos noted that Manafort, his former business associate Rick Gates, and Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked with Manafort in Ukraine, were listed as the beneficial owners for 31 accounts in Cyprus, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2014.
Copies of Manafort’s passport were included in bank documents obtained by the FBI, which helped Magionos connect him to the overseas accounts.
Magionos told the court bank accounts located in Cyprus were closed in 2013.
Manafort is facing 18 counts of bank and tax fraud. He has pleaded not guilty.
