Reprinted with permission from Alternet
Lev Parnas, the associate of Rudy Giuliani who has been indicted as part of an alleged campaign finance scheme, misled the government in his bail proceedings and hid the fact that he recently received $1 million from a Russian bank, prosecutors said Wednesday in a new court filing.
The prosecutors asked that Parnas have his bail revoked and that he enter the government’s custody, arguing that he poses a serious flight risk.
In addition to omitting the money he allegedly received from Russia, prosecutors said Parnas failed to reveal either the full payment amount he recently received from a law firm or the money he had in an escrow account, tied to a $4.5 million property he intended on buying.
They said with regard to the Russian funds, “While the majority of the money appears to have been used on personal expenses and to purchase a home … some portion of that money existed in Account-1 at the time Parnas submitted his financial affidavit.”
During his work with pretrial services, the document explained, Parnas has misled officials in other ways. It said that he falsely let pretrial services to believe that the court had allowed him to leave his home every day. The filing says that such action “confirms that even stringent conditions, of the sort he is currently under, are insufficient to secure his compliance with bail.”
As for the Russian funds, it’s not clear where they came from or what if any relationship they have to Parnas’s connections to Giuliani’s work in Ukraine.
Parnas’s lawyers said they are working on a response to the government’s new claims.
“We will file a written response in the coming days,” attorney Joseph Bondy told ABC News. “We look forward to a hearing next week in court.”
