One of Paul Manafort’s tax preparers on Friday said that she helped disguise US$900,000 in foreign income as a loan to reduce US President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman’s tax burden.
The testimony of tax preparer Cindy Laporta came as prosecutors from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office focused on the heart of their financial fraud case against Manafort, with jurors hearing testimony that he inflated his business income by millions of US dollars, and concealed foreign bank accounts he was using to buy luxury items and pay personal expenses.
Manafort’s defense has sought to blame any criminal conduct on his long-time deputy, Rick Gates, while witnesses for the prosecution have testified that Manafort was heavily involved in his own finances and personally directed Gates’ actions.
Laporta said that she agreed under pressure from Gates during a conference call in September 2015 to alter a tax document for one of Manafort’s businesses to show the US$900,000 loan.
When Laporta and a colleague provided an assessment of how much tax Manafort would owe, Gates responded that Manafort did not have the money to pay it.
After a back-and-forth discussion about how much income should be reclassified as a loan to aid Manafort, they settled on US$900,000, she said.
The result was an altered tax payment that Gates told her “could be paid by Mr Manafort,” Laporta said.
Laporta, who testified under a grant of immunity from prosecutors, said she knew what she did was “not appropriate,” adding: “You can’t pick and choose what’s a loan and what’s income.”
Asked why she engaged in misconduct, Laporta said she had few good choices.
“I could have called them liars,” she said of Manafort and Gates. “But Mr Manafort was a long-time client of the firm and I didn’t think I should do that.”
The testimony is important, as prosecutors try to rebut defense arguments that Manafort cannot be responsible for financial fraud because he left the details of his spending to others.
Those others include Gates, who pleaded guilty earlier this year and is expected to testify soon as the government’s star witness.
Most of the e-mail evidence introduced on Friday implicated Gates more directly than Manafort in a scheme to convert income into loans.
However, Manafort was copied in on several e-mails discussing the matter.
Laporta also described an effort by Manafort and Gates to falsify financial records that would allow Manafort to obtain mortgage loans.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS