Ex-Hamptons Homeowner Manafort Settles DOJ Suit for $3.15M

Paul Manafort, the former Water Mill homeowner who chaired Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, will pay $3.15 million in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over undeclared foreign bank accounts.

Prosecutors alleged that Manafort had failed to disclose more than 20 offshore bank accounts he ordered opened in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The government sought an order for Manafort to pay fines, penalties and interest, alleging he had failed to file federal tax documents detailing the accounts and failed to disclose the money on his income tax returns from 2006-2015. The settlement was detailed in court documents filed Feb. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

The Treasury Department had notified Manafort of the fines and assessment in July 2020 and the civil case was filed in April 2022, four months after Manafort sold his 10-bedroom Jobs Lane mansion for about $10 million to an undisclosed buyer whose name was shielded by the shell company Summerbreeze LLC, property records show.

Manafort was convicted of eight financial crimes and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison in 2018 as part of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump pardoned Manafort in 2020, less than a month before leaving office and seven months after Manafort was released to home confinement due to coronavirus concerns.

Prosecutors were originally planning to seize Manafort’s Water Mill property but a federal judge ruled he could keep it after he was pardoned.

Manafort’s ties to Ukraine led to his ouster from Trump’s campaign in August 2016, less than a month after Trump accepted the Republican nomination.

-With Associated Press and Taylor K. Vecsey