Wasn't he getting paid millions, like friggin huge money and such to be the Kremlin's Wormtongue in Ukraine?
Ironically, he made
$17 million from that.
From what they're saying, guess he used his money as collateral to borrow more, and then made some bad investments. They mention a previous story about a Ukrainian cable TV station that didn't work out.
Anyways, I enjoyed this:
After The Times shared some of the documents with representatives of Mr. Manafort, a spokesman, Jason Maloni, did not dispute that the debts might have existed at one time. But he maintained that the Cyprus records were “stale and do not purport to reflect any current financial arrangements.”
“Manafort is not indebted to Mr. Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign,” Mr. Maloni said. “The broader point, which Mr. Manafort has maintained from the beginning, is that he did not collude with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.” (Mr. Manafort resigned as campaign manager last August amid questions about his past work in Ukraine.)
The Times pegs these as being current circa December 2015. He was working for Trump March 2016. If they're not disputing the story, but saying those debts were gone three months later, that raises way more questions than it answers.
If there's really nothing to hide, these dudes need way better PR people.