Manafort Trial Day 4: Tax Fraud And Bookkeepers

Updated at 1:37 p.m. ET

Paul Manafort's federal trial has now squarely entered the alleged bank and tax fraud section.

The former Trump campaign chairman's trial in Alexandria, Va., entered its fourth day Friday with the spotlight moving away from his lavish spending habits and onto how prosecutors say he concealed information from his financial record-keepers and lied about his income to acquire loans.

Manafort's trial is the first to make its way to jurors after indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Friday began with further testimony from Philip Ayliff, a tax accountant who said he began working for Manafort more than 20 years ago. Ayliff testified that in the process of filing Manafort's tax returns, the former Trump campaign chairman had multiple opportunities to disclose foreign bank accounts but did not do so.

"They never told us about any income that was deposited in foreign accounts," Ayliff said, adding that his accounting firm would want to know of such accounts "to make sure that income is being picked up and reported correctly."

Manafort is facing 18 counts in all of tax and bank fraud, including failing to report foreign bank accounts.

Prosecutors say Manafort used the offshore bank accounts, based mainly in Cyprus, to purchase millions of dollars of goods and services directly so he could avoid paying taxes on the money he received for political consulting work he did in Ukraine.

Ayliff said he once asked Manafort if he owned a foreign bank account, and Manafort said no.

Ayliff and another bookkeeper who worked with Manafort, Heather Washkuhn, are the first financial record-keepers to testify in the trial. Collectively, they have cut into one of the defense's main arguments: that Manafort wasn't involved with his own finances at a granular level and that his former business partner Rick Gates is responsible for the bank and tax fraud.

Ayliff described Gates as Manafort's partner and right-hand man, but when asked who was in charge in the relationship, he said, "Oh, Mr. Manafort."

He also said Gates never asked him to hide information from Manafort and that the two men were often on calls together to discuss taxes.

"I would say [Manafort] was very knowledgeable; he was very detail oriented," Washkuhn said Thursday. "He approved every penny of every thing we paid."

Washkuhn also detailed how after Manafort's political consulting money from Ukraine stopped rolling in, around 2015, he and his company began piling up debt and financial woes. Prosecutors say this is when Manafort lied to banks to get loans to continue paying for the sort of luxury items witnesses detailed earlier in the week.

Emails shown in court showed Washkuhn desperately trying to get Manafort to pay his bills — at one point warning that his company's health insurance plan was going to be canceled because the bill had not been paid. Washkuhn was also shown a financial document sent to a bank. She said it claimed Manafort's company brought in millions of dollars more in income than documents her company created.

Ayliff's testimony will conclude Friday afternoon. The government is expected to call another accountant to the stand after that.

Also, the jury was granted permission earlier in the week by Judge T.S. Ellis III to bring a birthday cake to the courthouse Friday, presumably to celebrate the birthday of one of the jurors.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.