Manafort agrees to pay $3.15 million to settle Justice Dept. suit over foreign bank accounts he didn’t declare

Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle a civil case filed by the Justice Department over undeclared foreign bank accounts.

When the civil case was filed in April 2022, prosecutors alleged that Manafort had failed to disclose more than 20 offshore bank accounts he ordered opened in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The government sought an order for Manafort to pay fines, penalties and interest, alleging he’d failed to file federal tax documents detailing the accounts and failed to disclose the money on his income tax returns. The government said false tax returns were filed from 2006-2015 and that the Treasury Department had notified Manafort of the fines and assessment in July 2020.

The settlement was detailed in court documents filed Feb. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Manafort faced criminal charges as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia-related investigation into Trump’s associates. A jury convicted him in 2018 of eight financial crimes, including several related to his political consulting work in Ukraine, but the judge hearing the case declared a mistrial on 10 other counts when jurors couldn’t reach a verdict.

Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Trump pardoned his former campaign chairman in the final weeks of his presidency.

Manafort’s ties to Ukraine led to his ouster from Trump’s campaign in August 2016, less than a month after Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

At the time the suit was filed, Manafort’s attorney, Jeffrey Neiman, said in a statement that it “seeks a money judgment against Mr. Manafort for simply failing to file a tax form.

“Mr. Manafort was aware the Government was going to file the suit because he has tried for months to resolve this civil matter,” Neiman said. “Nonetheless, the Government insisted on filing this suit simply to embarrass Mr. Manafort.”