Simon Shuster on Paul Manafort

“Paul Manafort went to work in Ukraine in 2005... A U.S. embassy cable... described Manafort’s job as giving an “extreme makeover” to... presidential hopeful... Viktor Yanukovych, who had the backing of the Kremlin and most of Ukraine’s wealthiest tycoons. His Party of Regions, the cable said, was "a haven" for "mobsters and oligarchs." ...Yanukovych had served jail time in his youth for theft and battery. He also had a hard time speaking Ukrainian... The man paying the exorbitant bills for these efforts was... the coal and metals magnate Rinat Akhmetov. ...[S]ome of Yanukovych’s political patrons were implicated in the murder of Georgy Gongadze... abducted and beheaded [in 2000].”

“Manafort arrived in Ukraine in the wake of the Orange Revolution... doctors determined that Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned with dioxin... With guidance from Manafort and backing from Moscow, the Party of Regions made an astonishing comeback over the next five years, culminating in Yanukovych’s successful bid for the presidency in 2010. ...With money from the Party of Regions and its... backers, [Manafort] hired lobbyists in Washington to spin the imprisonment of [former Prime Minister] Tymoshenko as an example of Ukraine’s commitment to the rule of law. ...Such services did not come cheap... with payments worth $12.7 million designated for [Manafort] between 2007 and 2012. The indictment... claims Manafort and an associate laundered the proceeds of his work in Ukraine through offshore accounts, and failed to pay U.S. taxes on the income.”