WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chief Paul Manafort secretly paid a group of former senior European politicians more than two million euros ($2.5 million) to lobby for Ukraine’s then-leader backed by Russia, US prosecutors have claimed.

The charges, lodged in a Washington federal court by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday, said Manafort retained the so-called Hapsburg Group of onetime politicians to “take positions favourable to Ukraine, including by lobbying the United States.”

The group, which operated from 2012-2013, was managed by an unnamed “former European chancellor,” who along with other members of the group lobbied US legislators and White House officials, the indictment alleged.

They were to “appear to be providing their independent assessments of government of Ukraine actions, when in fact they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine,” according to the indictment.

Manafort, 68, has been accused by the team investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections and possible collusion with the Trump campaign of money laundering, tax fraud and banking fraud connected to work he did for Viktor Yanukovych from 2006-2014.

Austrian media reported that the former European chancellor in question was Alfred Gusenbauer, the country’s leader from 2007-8.

Gusenbauer on Saturday denied to the Austria Press Agency and to public radio that he had conducted any such lobbying work, however, adding that he had never heard of the Hapsburg Group.

“I met Manafort two times I think... but I had nothing to do with Paul Manafort’s activities in Ukraine or with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and his activities in the US,” Gusenbauer, 58, told radio station Oe1.

Yanukovych served as Ukraine’s president from 2010 until he was ousted in 2014 as a result of a popular uprising.

After that, Manafort stopped working for him, eventually returned to the United States and, in 2016, joined Trump’s presidential election campaign. .

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2018