In 2006, Manafort signs a $10 million-a-year consulting and public relations contract with a man Reuters calls a “Putin crony,” Oleg Deripaska, who not coincidentally had also been the man who originally connected Manafort to Akhmetov’s Party of Regions.44 In May 2019, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) will quote a Treasury Department document to describe Deripaska as “a designated [U.S.-sanctioned] individual. He possesses a Russian diplomatic passport. He regularly claims to represent the Russian government. He’s an aluminum—and other metals—billionaire and he’s been investigated by the U.S.
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