Special counsel brings new charges against Manafort, Gates
Ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Richard Gates have been indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, according to a statement released by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller filed an indictment with 32 counts -- including 16 counts related to false individual income tax returns, seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, five counts of bank fraud conspiracy, and four counts of bank fraud.
The new charges stem from work Manafort and Gates performed for Ukraine, specifically for Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych and the political parties affiliated with him.
Between 2006 - 2015, the indictment charges that the two did not pay taxes on the Ukraine income, "by disguising it as alleged 'loans'" from offshore corporate entities and using foreign accounts to buy U.S. real estate, and improve and refinance their properties.
Further, between 2015 and 2017, as the Ukrainian income dried up after Yanukovych fled to Russia, Manafort, with Gates' help, extracted money from his own real estate by using the properties as collateral to get loans of over $20 million. They did so, according to the indictment by "falsely inflating Manafort's and his company's income and by failing to disclose existing debt to qualify for the loans." The special counsel's office says in the documents that Manafort "spent millions of dollars on luxury goods and services for himself and his extended family through payments wired from the offshore nominee accounts" to vendors in the U.S.
The indictment says that "more than $75,000,000 flowed through the offshore accounts," and it accuses Manafort of laundering over $30,000,000 and Gates of taking $3,000,000 from the offshore accounts, income that he also hid from the Treasury Department and DOJ.
This is a new set of charges filed from a different court, in Virginia. The other charges in this case were filed in Washington, D.C., in a 12-count indictment in October. The charges Thursday are similar to the October charges, but the dollar amounts are higher.
For now, everything Manafort gets charged with Gates is also charged with, since they are co-defendants in a conspiracy case, Reid points out. Gates was expected to plead guilty and make a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, Reid reported a few days ago, At this point any plea deal has not been public.
Attorney Tom Green confirmed with CBS News that he is representing Gates.
Gates' original legal team asked to withdraw after he decided to pursue a plea deal with Green instead of going to trial. However, that request has been delayed over the past two weeks. There are reports that Green has already been fired, but he has just filed an official appearance with the court and confirmed to CBS in an email that he is representing Gates.
The special counsel has been leading the investigation into potential Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
CBS News' Paula Reid and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
