I haven’t been following the Paul Manafort trial all that closely.
Sure, I know all about the ostrich jacket and the $12K suits. All those houses. All that landscaping. All those wire transfers. His being flat broke until he saw an opportunity to make a few large ones and volunteered to work for free for the Trump campaign. (So much for hiring “the best people.” Or does it not count as a hire if they work for free?)
I know that the judge wants to move things along. And that the Manafort defense strategy appears to be blaming everything on Manafort’s underling, Rick Gates.
But I haven’t been hanging on every word uttered in court.
Still, I could not help but notice the truly pathetic testimony of one Cindy LaPorta, a CPA with the firm of Kositzka, Wicks and Company who helped Manafort cook his books so that he could get loans to sustain his ostrich jacket, $12K suit lifestyle. This was after Manafort’s bookkeeper wouldn’t go along with the con. Not so LaPorta (who was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony).
Cindy Laporta, said she went along with falsifying his tax records because she feared confronting her longtime client. (Source: Washington Post)
She knew better.
As the afternoon waned, prosecutor Uzo Asonye began pressing Manafort’s former accountant Cindy Laporta to detail financial arrangements that prosecutors allege Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates, used to evade paying taxes, including classifying income from foreign companies as “loans” to themselves.
Laporta testified that she was suspicious of the loans, many of which were thinly documented.
“Did you have concerns about representation you received about these foreign loans?” Asonye asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you believe the representations about these foreign loans?”
“No,” she said.
She knew better.
“I could have refused to file the tax return,” which she said could lead to litigation with Manafort’s firm.
“I could have called Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates liars, but Mr. Manafort was a long-time client of the firm and I did not want to do that either,” she said.
Sometimes you just have to call a liar a liar. But I’m sure the pressure was on. There are a couple of questions swirling around in my head. Did she run the situation by any of her partners/colleagues? Maybe she did. Maybe they encouraged her to get along/go along. I’m also wondering just how much her firm knew about Manafort’s reputation. It could well be that people are just coming out of the woodwork now, but I do keep hearing that everyone in Washington “knew” that Manfort was dirty. What did her firm know and when did they know it? Lie down with dogs…
Asked if she regretted her actions, she agreed; “I very much regret it.” She said she was taking responsibility now.
I’ll bet she does regret it. Even if she dodges the criminal bullet, I can’t imagine she’s all that employable as a CPA any more. And I suspect her firm may not weather this storm, either. Didn’t their work for Enron topple the august accounting firm of Arthur Andersen?
LaPorta actually was kind of fingers-crossed that someone else – at the bank Manafort was trying to con – would notice that something wasn’t right, taking her off the hook:
Laporta said she forwarded the paperwork to Citizens Bank despite her apprehensions because she “honestly believed the bank would have to vet the document themselves” and that this meant she was legally “protected” from criminal liability.(Source: Daily Beast)
I don’t think that culpability-wise that it works that way. But what do I know? I was involved in plenty of gross stupidity over the course of my career, but nothing that involved the words “criminal liability.”
Cindy LaPorta…
I’m guessing she had a nice, well-paid job that she liked. A respected position in her community. (She was on a non-profit board.)
She’s now expunged from the Kositzka, Wicks website, but you can still get a few glimpses out there in google-world.
Get to Know Cindy at Work. Q. What do you love about your job? I love our team approach and collaboration in our commitment to entrepreneurs.
Where was that “team approach” when LaPorta most needed it? Or were those other team members in cahoots when it cam to turning a blind eye? And were Manafort and Co. considered entrepreneurs? They were certainly, ahem, enterprising.
Cindy Outside the Office. Q. Who has been most influential in your life? My parents, for their hard work and devotion to family.
Ouchie.
I actually feel a tiny bit sorry for Cindy LaPorta.
Sure, she was weak. And she did something that has to be against the ethics of her profession. But layered on her bad behavior is the fact that she had the ill-fortune to land smack-dab in the middle of a colossal scandal, a star witness in a trial that if it weren’t for the prominence of the defendant, would not be anything that we’d have heard word-one about.
Cindy LaPorta isn’t exactly an innocent bystander, but she sure is getting payback for a couple of rancid decisions in a very big, very public way. And I’m guessing that her career as a CPA has come to a screeching, very big, very public halt.
Bet she regrets the day that Paul Manafort darkened her door in one of his $12K Bijan suits.
1 comment:
> Did she run the situation by any of her partners/colleagues?
There is probably no way to know, however it would be my guess that she did not. Her partners/colleagues would most likely not have wanted to discuss it because they would not have wanted to “know”. Most likely, everyone in the firm would have “unofficially” known and none would have wanted to talk about it.
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