As a tax professor who specializes in anti-money laundering, what is most striking to me about the criminal indictment against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates is how easy they made it look to launder nearly $20 million dollars from prying government eyes over a period of nearly 10 years.

As far as I can tell, the only reason this alleged tax evasion was brought to light is that they were being investigated by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his team for any connections to Russian interference in the presidential election. If they hadn’t been involved in the Trump campaign, according to the indictment, they might very well have gotten away with a truly spectacular tax fraud.

The indictment does not apply only to those individuals, though. It also applies to the way taxpayers declare income accumulating in foreign bank accounts of companies that they own.

How do you go about hiding nearly $20 million over a decade? In this case, first, according to the indictment, between the two of them, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates set up over 30 companies and partnerships in the United States and abroad. These entities opened bank accounts in Cyprus, the Grenadines and Britain.