Rick Gates failed to disclose he had a second passport until three days after he surrendered to face charges with Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman that they hid their work as agents of Ukraine and laundered millions of dollars, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors for Special Counsel Robert Mueller cited that omission as one of several reasons they oppose Gates’ request to ease his bail terms, which confine him to his home in Richmond, Virginia, with electronic monitoring. Gates asked the judge to end the monitoring and allow him to travel around the U.S. and internationally.
The prosecutors said Gates’ lawyers didn’t tell them until Thursday about the second passport, even though he represented that he only had one when he pleaded not guilty in federal court in Washington on Monday.
Gates’ lawyers said in their request Thursday that he would be surrendering an additional passport, which had been pending, as well as another travel document.
Manafort’s international travels have also come under prosecutors’ scrutiny, as well as his three current passports with different numbers. The prosecutors said he had traveled to Mexico, China and Ecuador this year with a phone registered to an alias.
Gates, who faces as many as 12 1/2 years in prison, may flee if the judge eases the terms of his $5 million bail package, the prosecutors warned. Gates, who served as Manafort’s right-hand man in their international political consulting business, also failed to tell prosecutors about the nature and extent of his assets, according to the filing.
In his filing, Gates failed to address the “strong” evidence against him or the “existence of foreign bank records in his name, or his control over millions of dollars through these accounts,” prosecutors said.
While Gates’ lawyers had said his assets were limited, prosecutors said he claimed he was worth $30 million in a February 2016 application seeking a $3 million line of credit. In August, he and his wife had at least $1.9 million with a financial adviser, and they had paid $1.38 million since 2015 to a contractor working on their house.
(c) 2017, Bloomberg · David Voreacos, Andrew Harris
{Matzav.com}
