A search warrant application unsealed Wednesday showed Paul Manafort and his wife owed Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska $10 million.
In an affidavit attached to the July 2017 application, an FBI agent said he had reviewed tax returns for a company controlled by Manafort and his wife that showed a $10 million loan from a Russian lender identified as Oleg Deripaska.
The application to search Manafort’s Virginia apartment was granted, providing key evidence for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments of Manafort as part of his investigation into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Mueller has been investigating the financial links between Manafort and Deripaska, a metals magnate who is known to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Deripaska was among the Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the United States in April.
This is not the first revelation of serious financial ties between Manafort and Deripaska. In October 2017, NBC News reported on a newly uncovered $26 million loan from the Russian oligarch to Trump's campaign chair which was one of several loans from Deripaska's Oguster Management Ltd. to various accounts and LLCs either with ties to or controlled by Manafort. That $26 million brought "the total of their known business dealings to around $60 million over the past decade."
Mueller also has indicted Konstantin Kilimnik, a political operative who sometimes served as an intermediary between Manafort and Deripaska. In court filings Mueller’s prosecutors have said Kilimnik has ties to Russian spy agencies, which Kilimnik denies.
On July 7, 2016, while working as President Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort emailed Kilimnik offering Deripaska "private briefings." Manafort reportedly used his campaign email account to make the overtures.
The affidavit unsealed on Wednesday also disclosed that Deripaska had financially backed Manafort’s consulting work in Ukraine when it started in 2005-2006, citing information from a source whose name was redacted, a sign that a former Manafort associate may have cooperated with the investigation.
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The search warrant application also confirmed that Mueller has been investigating Manafort’s role in a June 9, 2016 meeting that he attended at the Trump Tower in New York between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer and self-professed Kremlin informant who purportedly was carrying damaging information on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president.
The FBI sought “communications, records, documents and other files involving any of the attendees of the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump tower, as well as Aras and Amin Agalarov,” said the application, which misspelled the first name of Emin Agalarov.
Manafort had $10 million loan from Russian oligarch: court filing (Reuters)