Washington, – The White House Comptroller Gregory Craig, who held that position with former President Barack Obama in power, will be charged for his work in Ukraine with Paul Manafort, who was Donald Trump’s campaign manager and was recently convicted to seven and a half years in jail.
In a statement collected by US media, Craig’s lawyers said they expect their client to receive the accusation in the next few days, which they described as “unfounded abuse of procedural discretion.”
They also stated that his client “is not guilty of any crime.”
The possible imputation derives from a work that Craig did with Manafort for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice in 2012, after leaving the White House and joining the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
The Ministry of Justice under the Government of the deposed Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014) hired the services of Skadden to review and advise the trial against the opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
The law firm did not register as a foreign agent with the United States Government to carry out this assignment, a requirement for this type of contracts abroad.
Skadden subsequently reached an agreement with the government for which he paid 4.6 million dollars for not registering as a foreign agent and said that Craig provided “false and misleading verbal and written statements” to the Department of Justice during that process.
All this episode was reviewed by the team of special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who led for almost two years an investigation into the alleged links of the Trump team (including Manafort) with the Kremlin.
Manafort was sentenced in early March to seven and a half years in prison after being found guilty of various financial and lobbying crimes that stemmed from Mueller’s investigation, although they had nothing to do with the Trump campaign.
In fact, Manafort had to resign as campaign manager of Trump after discovering that he had hidden from the authorities a payment of 12.7 million dollars that he received for advising Yanukovych (EFEUSA).
