Manafort Laundering Explained
So I've been trying to figure out what Manafort has been doing exactly to launder his offshore money, and why he keeps taking out US loans if he's already rich.
Realize that he's got something like $75m offshore.
It seems like he was originally just loaning himself money from his offshore accounts every few months for cash flow. (See picture). That allowed him to avoid paying taxes… because it was a loan.
Then later, the loan would simply be 'forgiven' (though in theory that is taxable…).
Anyway, the FBI/IRS probably got wise to that, around 2013/14.
He switched tactics.
Instead, he would use offshore money to buy expensive real-estate, transferring it directly from his offshore account to the title company.
For whatever reason, nobody looks too closely at that, it doesn't look like income, etc.
He also used offshore accounts to pay vendors directly, for cars, decorating, landscaping, clothes, etc.
It never hits his accounts in the US, so difficult to track.
But that didn't solve his cash flow problem.
THUS what he did was take out construction loans or equity lines against his properties.
Again, it looks like a loan instead of income, but from a legit US bank.
Then, he could simply use the money for whatever he wanted.
And like a pyramid scheme, some of the new loans were used to make the monthly payments on the old loans.
He kept having to get bigger properties and bigger loans to pay the old loans and cover his increasing cash flow needs.
That is where we are now - why did he take out $16m in loans in 2016?