What is Paul Manafort net worth?
Paul Manafort is a political consultant, attorney, lobbyist, and convicted felon who has a net worth of $10 million. Throughout his career, he served as a campaign consultant to such Republican Party presidential candidates as Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Donald Trump. He has also lobbied on behalf of numerous international dictators and oppressive governmental regimes. Between 2017 and 2019, Manafort was charged with various crimes including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, tax and bank fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Personal Wealth and Assets
According to Federal prosecutors, at his peak, Paul Manafort's net worth topped $70 million. He would eventually forfeit more than $22 million in assets to the Federal government. He was sentenced to prison on charges of tax and bank fraud. He was imprisoned from June 2018 until May 2020. He was released after being pardoned by Donald Trump.
Manafort reportedly purchased several pieces of real estate worth a combined $11 million from 2006 to 2012. He also allegedly received $12 million in undisclosed payments from the pro-Russian former President of Ukraine. He eventually took on seven home equity loans worth more than $19 million. Years later we would learn that Paul earned $60 million consulting for Ukranian billionaires.
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Arrest
On October 30, 2017 Paul Manafort turned himself into the FBI to face a series of charges. He was indicted on charges of money laundering. Authorities claimed that Manafort laundered $18 million through shell companies that paid for a lavish lifestyle of luxury cars, homes and vacations. The charges carried a potential 20 year prison term. In total, he faced 12 charges including being an unregistered foreign agent, not paying taxes and lying on federal disclosure forms. He was ultimately sentenced to more than 70 months in prison. He was in jail from June 2018 to May 2020. He was released after being pardoned by Donald Trump.
According to the indictment, here are some of the ways Manafort spent his illicit millions:
- $5.4 million on home improvements in the Hamptons
- Nearly $1 million at an antique rug store
- $900,000 at a men's clothing store in New York City
- $800,000 on landscaping for his Hamptons home
- Three Range Rovers
- A $1.5 million condo in New York City
- A $3 million brownstone in Brooklyn
- A $2 million house in Virginia
The government was initially given approval to seize and sell all of Manafort's properties. After being pardoned, a federal judge allowed Paul to keep any properties that had not been sold yet. Those properties included his home in the Hamptons, a $3 million condo in New York City and a townhouse in Brooklyn.
Hamptons Home
In 1994 Paul and his wife paid $400,000 for a 2.4 acre property in the Hamptons. They proceeded to build a 5,700 square-foot home on the property. This is the property where he allegedly spent around $6 million in illicit funds on home improvements. He sold this home in November 2021 for $10.1 million.
Early Life and Education
Paul Manafort was born on April 1, 1949 in New Britain, Connecticut to Paul Sr. and Mary. His father had served in the US Army during World War II, and was mayor of New Britain from 1965 to 1971; he was later indicted in a corruption scandal. As a teen, Manafort went to St. Thomas Aquinas High School. He went on to attend Georgetown University, from which he graduated with a BS in business administration in 1971. Manafort subsequently obtained his JD from the same school in 1974.
Career Beginnings
Manafort began practicing law in 1977 with the Washington, DC firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease. The following year, he became the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign as well as the deputy political director of the Republican National Committee. After the election of Reagan in 1980, Manafort was named associate director of the Presidential Personnel Office; he was subsequently nominated to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation's board of directors.
Lobbying
Manafort got into lobbying in 1980 when he helped found the Washington, DC firm Black, Manafort & Stone; the firm later changed its name to Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly when Peter G. Kelly joined the fray. In 1985, BMSK signed a $600,000 contract with the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, Jonas Savimbi. Over the ensuing years, Manafort and his firm went on to lobby for a plethora of other international leaders, many of them dictators. Among them, Manafort lobbied for the dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos; the dictator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Mobutu Sese Seko; and Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who had ties with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Additionally, Manafort lobbied for the human-rights-abusing governments of Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, the Dominican Republic, and Nigeria.
Campaign Chairman for Trump
In 2016, Manafort became manager of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. In his brief time in this position, he engaged in a number of illegal activities, including meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and other Russian agents to dig up damaging information on Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton. Manafort ultimately resigned as campaign chairman five months after accepting the role. In 2019, it was found that he had lied to investigators about his correspondences with Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik and his and the Trump's administration involvement with Russia's election meddling.
Criminal Investigations and Charges
Manafort has been the subject of myriad criminal investigations, both before and after his tenure as chairman of Trump's presidential campaign. In 2014, the FBI launched an investigation into his involvement with deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Later, just before the inauguration of Trump in 2017, Manafort was put under active investigation by a number of federal agencies for his collusion in Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election. It was eventually determined by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Manafort had worked with Konstantin Kilimnik to facilitate Russia's interference in the election, and to conceal the evidence.
In October of 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI as a consequence of being indicted by a federal grand jury for various crimes, including engaging in conspiracy against the United States; engaging in money laundering; failing to file reports of international financial accounts; and making misleading and false claims in documents submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors alleged that Manafort had laundered over $18 million as part of compensation he received for his lobbying of Viktor Yanukovych. In early 2018, Manafort was charged with additional crimes involving tax and bank fraud; later in the year, he was indicted for witness tampering and obstruction of justice. More charges came in 2019, when he was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney on 16 counts related to mortgage fraud. Manafort served time in prison from June of 2018 to May of 2020, at which time he was released to home confinement due to COVID-19. He was later pardoned by his crony Trump in December of 2020.
Personal Life
In 1978, Manafort wed fellow attorney Kathleen Bond. A graduate of George Washington University, she earned her JD from Georgetown and passed the Virginia Bar exam in 1988. A few years after that, she became a member of the Washington, DC Bar. The Manaforts have two daughters named Andrea and Jessica.
