There’s more to this story than meets the eye. Producing a statement of assets is a pain the ass for people with complex finances, but it’s very doable. It’s certainly not something that requires weeks of research. The headline is misleading since it suggests that (1) Gates had produced the necessary paperwork, but (2) Mueller isn’t satisfied with it. In fact it’s Gates who’s dragging his feet.
The latest round of filings come as Gates has requested to be permitted to travel outside of his home for various family commitments and work meetings.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that Gates has still not “completed any paperwork to post his house, or any other property, and has failed to answer a series of questions about his assets.”
He still doesn’t get it.
My conspiratorial part suspects Gates is reluctant to show the various deposits in his accounts that started out as rubles.
My Trump’s Razor part guesses that it’s more straightforward and mundane—Gates has been cheating on his taxes by significantly undervaluing his assets, and he knows that if he accurately details what he actually has, the IRS will instantly recognize he owes a big chunk of change.
Both may be true.
Yep. Here’s the relevant info (from WaPo, Nov 5)
A low-key 45-year-old father of four, [Gates] chose to live in Richmond with his family instead of moving to New York City or Washington. His lawyers said his assets are “limited” other than “a single home.”
But last week, prosecutors thrust Gates into the forefront of the special counsel’s Russia investigation, depicting him as a willing collaborator in a scheme with Manafort to defraud the U.S. government through a web of overseas accounts, laundering millions of dollars and hiding his work as a foreign agent.
So clearly Gates’s assets are located in nominee accounts in the Cayman Islands, Isle of Man etc. He doesn’t want to disclose them because non-disclosure was the whole purpose of the nominee accounts.
EDIT: Nominee accounts can either be valid instruments of tax avoidance, in which case there would be no issue with disclosing them. Or they can be unlawful instruments of tax evasion and/or money laundering, in which case you probably don’t want to disclose them. Gates clearly falls into the latter category. His woes are only going to get worse. Unless he flips on Manafort AND Manafort then flips on Trump.
@nemo
@bluestatedon
So Gates is like a gymnast who hasn’t perfected his floor routine, balance beam routine, and vault. All he’s got is the uneven bars.
So basically Gates is trying to avoid disclosing information that could get him convicted for tax evasion, various kinds of fraud (if he falsified any previous financial disclosures for anything) and even more money laundering. But he still wants to be allowed to travel freely.
Pretty much the definition of flight risk. (And the odds are that Mueller’s team knows about all the other assets, it’s just that they can’t fill in the bonding paperwork for him.)
Tierny…you report: that Gates is proposing as a surety guarantee, someone who is already serving as surety for, “a relative who is currently charged in the United States District Court for the Southern District New York,”
Who is this individual and what charges are they facing? Isn’t that southern district Peet Bihara’s former neck of the woods? Might this be some sort of financial fraud issue?
Curious to know…
I wonder why Gates isn’t more forthcoming?
Gates , just isn’t the forthcoming type, like many of his friends.
Sounds to me like he doesn’t have enough “clean” money on hand to put up the kind of bail they’re asking for. Has plenty of dirty money, but exposing those funds would be tantamount to confessing to the very same sort of crimes he’s accused of.
It’s a nifty Catch-22…and I hope he chokes on it.
How about just implanting a chip?