Ukraine Says There’s No Evidence of Illicit Payments to Manafort

(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Volodymyr Verbyany – June 27, 2017)

Ukrainian prosecutors said they’d found no proof of illicit payments to U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager from his work for the party of the nation’s ousted leader.

Anti-corruption investigators in the ex-Soviet republic said last year that they’d found ledgers showing $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments between 2007 and 2012 earmarked for Paul Manafort from Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. But a probe uncovered no evidence, chief anti-graft prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytskyi told Ukrainian television.

“There were no Manafort signatures on any page of this ledger,” he said late Monday.

The news follows last week’s visit by Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko to Washington, where he met Trump in the White House. Manafort, who’d previously advised the Party of Regions and helped Yanukovych become president, denies any wrongdoing with regard to his activities in Ukraine.

©2017 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved. Article also appeared at bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-27/ukraine-says-there-s-no-evidence-of-illicit-payments-to-manafort