Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Bureau Denies Investigating Manafort

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has denied that it was investigating cases concerning President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who also organized the political campaign of Ukrainian ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.

“NABU has repeatedly stated that as a law enforcement agency called to investigate the corruption of Ukrainian top officials, it is not authorized to conduct a formal investigation into Paul Manafort’s involvement in receiving funds from the Party of Regions. He was not and is not a Ukrainian civil servant and therefore is not under investigation by NABU,” the bureau said in a statement.

READ MORE: Meet The Ukrainian MP Who Spent 10 Years Investigating Manafort

It follows a BBC report that claims NABU closed the Manafort investigation after the meeting between President Petro Poroshenko and Donald Trump in 2017.

“Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country's anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort,” the article stated. However, none of the BBC’s sources claimed that Trump used the meeting in the Oval Office to ask Poroshenko to stop investigating Manafort.

READ MORE: How Manafort Brought The Worst Practices From Ukraine To America

Manafort is accused of money laundering, tax evasion and fraud, as well as lobbying for the interests of Russia-friendly Yanukovych in the United States, although he was not registered as a foreign agent.

During 2016 and 2017, NABU investigated the Party of Regions “black ledger” case, which involved off-the-book payments from the party and included Central Election Commission chairman Mykhaylo Okhendovsky. The name Manafort also appeared in the documents.

In August 2016, NABU published part of the ledger that featured his name.

"The last entry in the book on P. Manafort is dated October 5, 2012. We emphasize that the presence of Manafort’s name on the list does not mean that he actually received these funds, because the recipient's box contains signatures of other people. The pre-trial investigation in this proceeding is ongoing,” NABU reported in August 2016.

READ MORE: Deep Dive Into Paul Manafort’s Corruption

In June 2017, NABU handed over the “black ledger” case to the Department of Special Investigations of the Prosecutor General's Office, reportedly because the investigation concerns the activities of the criminal group of the Yanukovych regime.

Referencing sources in Kyiv, the BBC reported that Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen received a payment of at least $400,000 for his assistance in organizing the first meeting between Poroshenko and the US President in 2017.

The BBC also reported that middlemen from Poroshenko’s side paid for Cohen’s efforts. The task of forming ties with Trump was entrusted to Poroshenko’s former assistant.

The Presidential Administration denied that Poroshenko's intermediaries paid Trump’s lawyer to organize the first meeting.

Meanwhile, the General Prosecutor's Office claims it did not "freeze" the Manafort investigation.

In an interview with the Voice of America, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said the speculation around the “so-called freezing of the Manafort case” coming from leading US media and now the BBC is completely untrue.

He also appealed to US special counsel Robert Mueller to create a joint investigation team to investigate Manafort’s case.

Lutsenko said that currently the General Prosecutor's Office has criminal cases in which Manafort appears.

“We have conducted a number of investigations and at least four times requested international legal assistance from our American colleagues, which we received," said Lutsenko.

He also said Mueller demanded information from the General Prosecutor's Office last year during the investigation into suspected links between Russia and Trump’s pre-election team.