Manafort Shell Company Never Paid Taxes On Mystery Loan
More Trump connections to Manafort’s mystery shell company.
It has been previously reported that Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort took out a $3.5 million loan through a newly formed shell company in the days after leaving the Trump campaign. However, a new report by NBC News found that Manafort’s shell company never paid $36,000 in taxes due on the transaction.
On the same day that he left the Trump campaign Paul Manafort formed a shell company and transferred ownership of one of his homes to that shell company. And a few weeks later Manafort took out a $3.5 million loan on that home through the shell company from a company tied to a Ukrainian oligarch with business connections to Donald Trump.
“A review of New York state and Suffolk County records shows the loan was made by S C 3, a subsidiary of Spruce Capital, which was co-founded by Joshua Crane, who has partnered with Donald Trump on real estate deals. Spruce is also partially funded by Ukrainian-American real-estate magnate Alexander Rovt, who tried to donate $10,000 to Trump’s presidential campaign on Election Day but had all but the legal maximum of $2,700 returned,” NBC News reported.
The report also noted that the terms of the loan were never filed with the government by the lender – a highly unusual omission.
According to the NBC News report, Manfort’s LLC has failed to pay about $36,750 in taxes on the property.
In December of 2016, the deed for the property was transferred to the LLC formed by Manafort. The luxury “Hamptons property had previously been held in the name of Kathleen Manafort, Paul’s wife”
The entire story raises the question of how Manafort came to Spruce Capital for the $3.5 million loan. Both parties seem to deny any connection through Trump or Alexander Rovt.
However, the NBC News report points out a troubling connection: “Rovt is a Ukrainian émigré to the U.S. who earned more than $1 billion selling fertilizer in Ukraine and buying real estate in New York. In 2011, he sold all his overseas interests to Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who had been Manafort’s business partner in a failed $850 million hotel redevelopment deal. Firtash is under U.S. indictment in an unrelated case and facing extradition from Vienna, Austria.”
Not the only Trump connection for Manafort’s mystery shell company
In December Manafort took out a new $9.5 million loan through his mystery shell company using the same property as collateral for the loan.
And the lender?
“Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, whose chief executive Steve Calk was an economic adviser to the Trump campaign.”
