Trump ex-aide Manafort accused of bank fraud in bail offer: document

Reuters
Paul Manafort leaves U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has drawn a new accusation of bank fraud from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office, according to court documents made public on Friday. The new accusation, related to a property Manafort owns in the Washington suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, comes on top of the indictment against Manafort last October for money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent. In a court filing amid legal wrangling over Manafort's $10 million bail package, prosecutors from Mueller's office said Manafort submitted false information to a bank for a mortgage on one of three properties he is now proposing to pledge as security for his release. "The proposed package is deficient in the government's view, in light of additional criminal conduct that we have learned since the court's initial bail determination," the prosecutors said in the filing, which disputes Manafort's latest bail offer. "That criminal conduct includes a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies, including criminal conduct relating to the mortgage on the Fairfax property, which Manafort seeks to pledge." Prosecutors said in the redacted filing that they had evidence that Manafort secured the $9 million mortgage from the Federal Savings Bank through false representations, including "doctored profit and lost statements" that overstated the property's income by "millions of dollars." The document does not level any new specific criminal charges against Manafort over the accusations. Manafort's attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The earlier charges against Manafort stem from Mueller's probe of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Separately on Friday, Mueller's office charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies with a criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with the election and "sow discord in the U.S. political system." (Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)