‘They never told us about any income deposited in foreign accounts,’ Manafort’s accountant told jurors.
An accountant for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort admitted at Manafort’s tax- and bank-fraud trial Friday that she filed tax returns she thought contained false information and that she may have committed a crime in doing so.
Accountant Cindy Laporta said she had a sense that what Manafort and aide Rick Gates told her about funds being transferred into their international political consulting business wasn’t accurate.
“I prepared the tax returns and communicated with banks based on information that Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort provided to me that I didn’t believe,” said Laporta, the first witness at the trial to testify under a grant of immunity.
The admission is the first time a witness has acknowledged knowing involvement in potential wrongdoing during Manafort’s trial, where the longtime lobbyist is fighting charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. Laporta is one of five people on the Mueller’s witness list for whom the government requested immunity.
Laporta, who works for Alexandria-based Kositzka Wicks & Company, said she sought the immunity because she was concerned about being prosecuted. Her attorney indicated Laporta would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights if forced to testify without immunity.
Laporta said she agreed on 2014 and 2015 tax returns to treat as loans $2.4 million in funds that Manafort’s consulting firm received from offshore businesses, even though she had doubts that they really were loans and got little documentation to back up that claim.
The alleged loans were also recorded in the books of Manafort’s DMP International firm as coming from the consulting firm’s customers, which Laporta found suspicious.
“I had not seen that before. Yes, it was a concern,” Laporta said.
In another exchange, Laporta testified that Gates in September 2015 told her Manafort’s income needed to be reduced so he could afford to pay his taxes. To finesse the situation, Gates instructed her to reduce Manafort’s income by not counting one of his loans.
While Laporta said she followed the instructions, she told Mueller prosecutor Uzo Asonye the move was “not appropriate.”
“We can’t pick and choose what’s a loan and [what’s] income,” she explained.
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"They never told us about any income deposited in foreign accounts," Paul Manafort's accountant told jurors Friday https://t.co/wE65Wtr6Em
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