Ok let's talk about how money laundering works. It's not about the rugs. It's about moving money through vehicles that have a veneer of legitimacy.https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1022960684970192897 …
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So you find a way to do the transaction cleanly. Say, through an antique rug dealer. You tell the rug dealer you're going to lend him $250k to (wink wink) allow him to buy new inventory.
The rug dealer is going to use that $250k, minus a cut, to buy some new inventory (wink wink) he conveniently found at a cutout for the mob boss.
Now you've written your loan vehicle with collateral so when the receipts for repaying that loan aren't found, you can just say, "I took the goods as repayment."
Ideally, you do this with high value products that aren't traceable, like antique rugs that have no serial numbers and arbitrary valuations.
So no, Manafort didn't buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of rugs. That's the point.
It's not illegal to buy 100s of thousands of dollars of rugs. He didn't get indicted for his interior design tastes.
When the indictments came out last fall a lot of people were like OOOH DAMN HE BOUGHT **RUGS** ONLY RUSSIAN AGENTS DO THAT and like no. Jesus, people.
Well you can paypal em if you're okay with getting in bed with the paypal mafia who might shield you from a racketeering charge but keeps that in their pocket to hold power over you.
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