(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge said he would sentence a former senior U.S. Treasury Department adviser to six months in jail for leaking confidential financial records involving Paul Manafort and others to a reporter.
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards had admitted that she passed information about payments involving Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, and his deputy, Rick Gates, to a reporter from BuzzFeed. Prosecutors say she provided more than 2,000 suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and other confidential data beginning in the summer of 2017.
Edwards had top-secret security clearance and access to the reports in her work with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, which probes money laundering by studying data about financial transactions.
Edwards, of Quinton, Virginia, asked U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan to impose no jail time. Prosecutors sought six months. Woods said Thursday that Edwards must also serve three years’ probation.
Financial institutions are required to file SARs within 30 days of detecting an incident -- such as cash transactions of $10,000 or more or those involving certain entities -- that might signal money-laundering, tax evasion or other criminal activities.
In addition to leaks about Manafort and Gates, Edwards passed along SARs concerning Prevezon Holdings Ltd., a Russian company sued by the U.S., and Maria Butina, a supposed gun enthusiast who pleaded guilty in 2018 to acting as a Russian agent.
Manafort was convicted in August 2018 of lying to tax authorities about tens of millions of dollars he earned as a political consultant in Ukraine and misleading banks about his financial health to get loans. He later pleaded guilty to conspiring to lobby illegally for Ukraine, along with laundering money to support a lavish lifestyle and tampering with witnesses. He was pardoned by Trump.
The case is U.S. v. Edwards, 19-cr-00064, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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