A Russian lawyer known for her involvement in a controversial 2016 meeting with Donald Trump’s campaign was charged on Tuesday with obstruction of justice in a separate matter.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, who attended the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, was accused by federal prosecutors in New York of fabricating evidence in a prominent money laundering case.
Ms Veselnitskaya, a 43-year-old who lives in Russia, was an attorney for Prevezon Holdings, which agreed to pay $5.9m in 2017 to settle civil money laundering claims brought by the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York.
On Tuesday, the US attorney’s office accused her of filing “an intentionally misleading declaration” in the case.
The lawyer also has come under scrutiny from Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible ties between Russia and members of the 2016 Trump campaign, after she met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at the Trump Tower in New York in June 2016.
The meeting was sold to Mr Trump Jr by a music promoter with ties to a Russian oligarch as an opportunity to receive dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. Mr Trump’s son has said no such information was ultimately exchanged.
The Prevezon Holdings case was connected to a massive Russian tax fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died while in pretrial detention in Moscow. His death led to the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which allowed the US to sanction Russian officials accused of being responsible.
The Manhattan US attorney’s office had sought to prove that Prevezon had laundered portions of the $230m fraud Magnitsky had uncovered.
The US attorney’s office on Tuesday alleged that Ms Veselnitskaya had submitted in that case the findings of an investigation by the Russian government “under the false pretence that these findings had been independently drafted.”
Prosecutors claimed she was involved in drafting the findings “in secret co-operation with a senior Russian prosecutor” and concealed her involvement from the court.
“Fabricating evidence — submitting false and deceptive declarations to a federal judge — in an attempt to affect the outcome of pending litigation not only undermines the integrity of the judicial process, but it threatens the ability of our courts and our government to ensure that justice is done,” Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement announcing the indictment.
