The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF NOVEMBER
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CELEBRATING WITH A BARK ◄P.16
2017
MANAFORT’S MANHATTAN HAUNTS INVESTIGATIONS The indicted former Trump campaign boss wasn’t only a Beltway fixer — he was a highliving New York wheeler-dealer who funneled overseas cash into property, haberdashery and other ill-gotten goods, the feds say BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
A cyclist passes newly installed concrete barriers on the Hudson River Park Bikeway in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the Oct. 31 vehicle attack that killed eight people. Photo: Michael Garofalo
HARD LESSONS OF VEHICLE ATTACK STREETS Hudson River Bikeway fortified with concrete barricades as authorities plan new safety measures BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
More than a week after a man drove a truck nearly a mile down the Hudson River Bikeway at high speed, deliberately striking pedestrians and cyclists and leaving eight dead and another twelve injured in his wake, concrete barriers spaced along the riverfront bike path serve as an imposing reminder of what NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill called “the worst terror attack in New York City since September 11th, 2001.” City and state transportation officials installed dozens of barriers along the Hudson River Greenway
in the days after the Oct. 31 attack in hopes of preventing vehicles from entering the park’s pedestrian and bicycle paths in the future. The Oct. 31 vehicle attack started near Pier 40, at Houston Street, where the driver steered his rented truck from West Street onto the bike path and sped south, targeting users of the crowded, narrow trail. The driver was shot and apprehended by police after he collided with a school bus near Stuyvesant High School. Police identified the suspect as Sayfullo Saipov, 29, an Uzbek immigrant who they said was inspired by the Islamic State. The attack marked the second time this year that a driver left a Manhattan street to target bystanders. In May, an intoxicated driver made an abrupt u-turn onto a Times Square sidewalk and plowed through pedestrians for three blocks, killing
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It’s a truism that New Yorkers will go to extraordinary lengths to obtain, maintain — and of course, profit from their own sliver of Manhattan real estate. The tradition dates to the Astors, Stuyvesants, Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, Rhinelanders and Rockefellers, and typically, a lot of corner-cutting has been involved. But the city’s great land-owning families were lucky: Federal prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III wasn’t around back then to police their property purchases, flips, mortgages and other transactions. Ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort wasn’t so fortunate. Thus, an opaque and suspicious Soho real estate play figured in his October 30th indictment by the Justice Department’s special counsel. The 12-count indictment alleges conspiracy, money laundering, false filings, tax fraud and a scheme to conceal millions in income he derived as an unregistered agent of the Ukrainian government. Manafort pleaded not guilty to the charges. The charging document also provides a window into the lifestyle of a super-lobbyist-cum-part-time-Manhattanite, the one-percent variety, who plowed millions into trophy properties and hundreds of thousands into high-end creature comforts, like bespoke suits at a Fifth Avenue boutique. The only problem: It wasn’t kosher, Mueller alleges. Manafort, he says,
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Sign last Thursday outside of Aronson’s Floor Covering at 135 West 17th Street. Photo: Ryder Kessler deployed offshore accounts to evade taxes and wire vast sums into the U.S., buying everything from housekeeping services to pricey antiques. “Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the U.S. without paying taxes on that income,” Mueller wrote. All told, the indictment calculates, he laundered $18 million from abroad. Of that amount, roughly $4.5 million in offshore funds, 25 percent of the total, was used to purchase luxury goods, services and real property in Manhattan from 2008 to 2014, an analysis of the charges shows. The cash helped Manafort cut a wide swath across the island, where he periodically worked, played, politicked, patronized an exclusive cigar club, shopped for $7,500 custom-tailored suits and $8,500 silk sport coats — and dined with Russians and Ukrainians. His expenditures have already reso-
nated in Chelsea. One enterprising family-owned business, Aronson’s Floor Covering, at 135 West 17th Street, took note of the indictment, referenced a mega-purchase he made in Alexandria, Virginia, and used it for a bit of savvy street-marketing: On the sidewalk by its picture windows, the 150-year-old firm placed a large signboard proclaiming, “PAUL MANAFORT spent $934,350 at an antique rug store — & no money with us ... ” This portrait of Manafort’s New York was gleaned from the indictment, which doesn’t include his five months running the Trump campaign, the ongoing Congressional probes of a Trump-Russia connection, and legal filings in separate civil cases. Since 2006, the 68-year-old international political consultant has owned a 43rd floor aerie in Trump Tower, a condo unit 25 stories below Donald Trump’s gilded triplex penthouse. Current value: $6 million, according to Manafort’s proposed bail package. From apartment 43-G, it was just an 18-story elevator ride down to the 25th-floor office of Donald Trump Jr., where on June 9th, 2016 the two men and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner held their now-infamous meeting with several Russians, some with apparent ties to the Kremlin and Russian spy services, who offered to “bring dirt” on Hillary Clinton. While the encounter didn’t figure in the indictment, both Mueller and Congress have been scrutinizing it for months.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 13 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, November 10th – 4:24 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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