Newsroom
US special counsel Robert Mueller has until Wednesday to decide whether to retry Paul Manafort on charges involving Cyprus accounts that failed to yield a conviction after a holdout juror.
Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager, was accused of money laundering in Cyprus among other places and a jury found him guilty on eight counts, including filing false tax returns and failing to report foreign bank accounts to the IRS in 2012.
But one juror did not budge on ten other counts, telling her peers she was not convinced beyond reasonable doubt on ten counts accusing Manafort of failing to report foreign bank accounts in years 2011, 2013 and 2014.
Retrial or mistrial?
The charges, which involved bank accounts mostly in Cyprus but also St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Seychelles, could be tried again if Mueller decides by Wednesday to retry the case.
Prosecutors had presented evidence that Manafort controlled those offshore accounts, providing jurors with his emails giving instructions for the withdrawal of millions of dollars to pay for expensive suits and luxury property.
But they failed to convince the juror that Manafort had willfully chosen not to report the accounts in connection with conspiracy and fraud charges.
A retrial would mean a new jury but media reports said there was no certainty whatsoever that this could happen.
Reports say Manafort had secret income from lobbying activities in Ukraine and hid the money from US authorities by stashing it away in foreign accounts including in Cyprus.
