(Bloomberg) -- Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP agreed to pay $4.6 million as part of a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over unregistered work it did with Paul Manafort to benefit the government of Ukraine in 2012 and 2013.
The law firm said Thursday that it should have registered as a lobbyist for a foreign government and agreed to do so to resolve its liability for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The government also said a Skadden partner made false and misleading statements to the Justice Department’s FARA unit, which contacted the firm in 2012 and 2013.
That partner has previously been identified as Greg Craig, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama who has left the firm. A message left for Craig’s lawyer wasn’t immediately returned.
Manafort, who was President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman for several months in 2016, hired Skadden to write a report in 2012 justifying the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine. Tymoshenko’s conviction and subsequent imprisonment raised questions about the rule of law in the Ukraine under Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a Kremlin-friendly ruler who employed Manafort on and off for almost a decade.
In response to the settlement, Skadden said it would register with the Justice Department’s FARA unit. The $4.6 million that it will pay to the U.S. Treasury Department represents the amount it billed for its paper justifying the prosecution Tymoshenko.
“We have learned much from this incident and are taking steps to prevent anything similar from happening again,” the firm said in a written statement.
--With assistance from Christian Berthelsen.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Farrell in New York at gregfarrell@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey D Grocott at jgrocott2@bloomberg.net, David S. Joachim
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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