Russian charged with Trump's ex-campaign chief was key figure in pro-Russia strategy (2018)
www.cnbc.com

... Kilimnik -- who special counsel Robert Mueller believes is currently in Russia and has ties to Russian intelligence -- helped formulate Manafort's pitches to clients in Russia and Ukraine, according to the records. Among Manafort's clients were Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other mega-wealthy Russians with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. ...

Deripaska has denied hiring Manafort for any pro-Russian political work, and unsuccessfully sued the AP last year over reporting that he had paid Manafort more than $10 million to influence political decisions and news coverage in Eastern Europe and Western capitals. Manafort also denied to the AP last year that he had performed political work for Deripaska.

A new filing by the U.S. government in Manafort's court cases showed that Manafort acknowledged that work in a 2014 FBI interview, and files seized by the FBI showed that Deripaska was the source of a $10 million loan to a Manafort-controlled company in 2010. ...

Paul Manafort Was Deep in Debt. He Saw an Opportunity in Trump. (2018)
www.nytimes.com

... Paul Manafort's services did not come cheap. His consulting work helped prop up foreign strongmen, who in turn kept him in $12,000 bespoke suits from Beverly Hills.

But by 2016, Mr. Manafort was broke. His longtime cash cow, the Ukrainian president Viktor F. Yanukovych, was out of office, living in exile. Mr. Manafort had $1 million in clothing debt alone, his business was hemorrhaging money and he was angling for bank loans to stay afloat.

He was in such bad shape that one of his accountants, Cynthia Laporta, who testified on Friday at Mr. Manafort's fraud trial, said she had agreed in 2015 to fraudulently lower his reported income on a tax return because she had been told he was unable to pay what he owed. She saved him about a half-million dollars in taxes.

The problems did not go away by 2016, so it was a peculiar time to volunteer his services to the Trump campaign. "I am not looking for a paid job," Mr. Manafort wrote in a memo proposing he help Donald J. Trump secure the Republican nomination for president. ...

Mr. Manafort's lawyers say he almost certainly would not have faced charges if not for his brief, unpaid stint with the Trump campaign. ...