This is rather interesting.
Mueller is alleging that payments to offshore companies - they may or may not be just accounts, but regardless, they are companies under the laws of the countries they are in - are somehow reportable as personal income.
Now that’s hard to prove. All the major corporations of this country have trillions parked offshore that’s income to offshore corporations they control. How that money comes home can be complicated, and may or may not be taxable.
Manafort most likely structured transactions in a way that he, his accountants and attorneys thought was legitimate if somewhat of a stretch. Companies push the envelope like that all the time.
And this is why 5 or 6 years ago - when all of this happened - Mueller did nothing. He knows all that.
So this indictment is just a hail mary move on his part to A) take the heat off Hillary and b) keep his own gig going, since most everyone see’s that it’s a con.
Five years came and went and Mr. Mueller just now discovers that payments in kind from offshore companies should be reported a different way then what he would like?
Tell Tim Cook.
I suspect the indictment was filed quickly and without all the information they would need to prosecute the case just to get it filed before statutes of limitations expired on some of these charges.
Remember the FBI already investigated Manafort regarding suspicious financial activity around 2012 and never found anything.
That would be 2011 to 2012 No? This was all in violation of Dodd-Frank, Please tell me those two Bozo's are not coming out of hiding and will be asking for more Financial Regulation, because obviously their FUBAR-piece didn't work...
To oversimplify this. For Americans, all offshore company entities are structured as:
1. "disregarded" - meaning it flows onto your own tax return as if it isn't a separate entity
2. a real company - operating business that has substance. Not a fake/shell operation.
In this case, it appears Manafort did not report these companies either way, but then wired money from these companies into the US.