President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned.

The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary said it would be 'inappropriate' to talk about Manafort because he is not a White House employee - even though he was Trump's campaign chairman.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

A new report claims that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort (left) secretly lobbied on behalf of a Russian oligarch to promote Putin's (right) government abroad

According to interviews conducted and documents obtained by the AP, Manafort worked for oligarch Oleg Deripaska (pictured) from 2006 until as late as 2009, getting paid $10million a year to lobby for Russian interests in Washington

SPICER: HE'S NOT IN THE WHITE HOUSE, WE ARE SAYING NOTHING White House press secretary Sean Spicer now says it would be 'inappropriate' to talk about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Spicer's mum stance is just the latest effort to put distance between the former top campaign official and his Russia ties – after earlier calling his role helming Trump's campaign as 'minimal' and limited. It would be 'inappropriate for us to comment on a person who is not a White House employee,' Spicer told NBC Wednesday. Manafort never followed Trump to the White House, having gotten axed from his leading campaign job following reports about his Russia ties, which included doing work for a pro-Kremlin Urkanian political party. Spicer said it would be 'inappropriate' to comment about Paul Manafort since he doesn't work for the White House after reports about his work to boost Vladimir Putin On Monday, Spicer was even more dismissive. 'There's been a discussion of Paul Manafort, who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time,' he said. Manafort ran Trump's campaign for five months. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also has made statements diminishing the role of former Trump campaign aides and associates who may have Russia links. Conway cast Carter Page (left) and J.D. Gordon (right) as 'fringe players' in the Trump campaign – as they are reportedly under an FBI spotlight for their links with Russia On Tuesday, while appearing on on 'Fox & Friends,' Conway said that that Carter Page, a onetime campaign foreign policy adviser, and J.D. Gordon, who served as a national security adviser, were 'fringe players' whom Trump doesn't know personally. 'I have spoken directly to the president and other senior officials about this,' Conway said. 'He doesn't know these gentlemen. He didn't work with them,' she said. The FBI and two intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russia sought to undermine the November election. The White House has denied any collusion with the Russians took place. Page and Gordon are reportedly targets of the FBI investigation, along with former Trump-whisperer Roger Stone. 'In the case of Mr. Page, Mr. Gordon, some others, they really have very attenuated contacts to the campaign that I managed for the last three months,' Conway said. Advertisement

Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP.

Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

'We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success,' Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, 'will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government.'

Manafort's plans were laid out in documents obtained by the AP that included strategy memoranda and records showing international wire transfers for millions of dollars. How much work Manafort performed under the contract was unclear.

The disclosure comes as Trump campaign advisers are the subject of an FBI probe and two congressional investigations. Investigators are reviewing whether the Trump campaign and its associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign.

Manafort has dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and misguided, and said he never worked for Russian interests. The documents obtained by AP show Manafort's ties to Russia were closer than previously revealed.

In a statement to the AP, Manafort confirmed that he worked for Deripaska in various countries but said the work was being unfairly cast as 'inappropriate or nefarious' as part of a 'smear campaign.'

'I worked with Oleg Deripaska almost a decade ago representing him on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments,' Manafort said. 'My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russian political interests.'

When asked about the report this morning by NBC, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said it would be 'inappropriate for us to comment on a person who is not a White House employee.'

Deripaska became one of Russia's wealthiest men under Putin, buying assets abroad in ways widely perceived to benefit the Kremlin's interests.

U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 described Deripaska as 'among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis' and 'a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin's trips abroad.'

In response to questions about Manafort's consulting firm, a spokesman for Deripaska in 2008 - at least three years after they began working together - said Deripaska had never hired the firm. Another Deripaska spokesman in Moscow last week declined to answer AP's questions.

Manafort worked as Trump's unpaid campaign chairman last year from March until August. Trump asked Manafort to resign after the AP revealed that Manafort had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation until 2014 on behalf of Ukraine's ruling pro-Russian political party .

Manafort, right, worked as the chairman for the Trump campaign from March until August, when he was forced to resign in disgrace when it was revealed he secretely lobbied for the ruling Pro-Russian government in Ukraine

The newly obtained business records link Manafort more directly to Putin's interests in the region. According to those records and people with direct knowledge of Manafort's work for Deripaska, Manafort made plans to open an office in Moscow, and at least some of Manafort's work in Ukraine was directed by Deripaska, not local political interests there. The Moscow office never opened.

Manafort has been a leading focus of the U.S. intelligence investigation of Trump's associates and Russia, according to a U.S. official. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the investigation were confidential.

Meanwhile, federal criminal prosecutors became interested in Manafort's activities years ago as part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukraine assets after the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych there in early 2014. No U.S. criminal charges have ever been filed in the case.

FBI Director James Comey, in confirming to Congress the federal intelligence investigation this week, declined to say whether Manafort was a target. Manafort's name was mentioned 28 times during the hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, mostly about his work in Ukraine. No one mentioned Deripaska.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday that Manafort 'played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time' in the campaign, even though as Trump's presidential campaign chairman he led it during the crucial run-up to the Republican National Convention.

Manafort and his associates remain in Trump's orbit. Manafort told a colleague this year that he continues to speak with Trump by telephone. Manafort's former business partner in eastern Europe, Rick Gates, has been seen inside the White House on a number of occasions. Gates has since helped plan Trump's inauguration and now runs a nonprofit organization, America First Policies, to back the White House agenda.

MANAFORT ALSO ACCUSED OF HIDING PAYMENTS FROM PRO-RUSSIA UKRAINIAN POLITICAL PARTY Yesterday, a Ukrainian lawmaker released a document that he said links Manafort to attempts to hide a $750,000 payment from a pro-Russia political party. Lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko published a 2009 invoice purportedly signed by Manafort that shows a $750,000 payment for 501 computers to a company called Davis Manafort. The money came from a Belize-registered offshore company via a bank in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan. Leshchenko said the contract was a cover for payments made to Manafort for work he did for the pro-Russian Party of the Regions in Ukraine, which backed former Russia-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country amid anti-government protests in 2014. A Ukrainian lawmaker says Manafort tried to hide payments from a pro-Russian Party in Ukraine which backed former Russia-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (pictured on the left with Putin) The Associated Press was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the document. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, called the allegations 'baseless' and said they should be 'summarily dismissed.' Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), which was set up to investigate official corruption, told the AP that it is not going to look into the reports, since Manafort is not a Ukrainian citizen. Advertisement

Gates, whose name does not appear in the documents, told the AP that he joined Manafort's firm in 2006 and was aware Manafort had a relationship with Deripaska, but he was not aware of the work described in the memos.

Gates said his work was focused on domestic U.S. lobbying and political consulting in Ukraine at the time. He said he stopped working for Manafort's firm in March 2016 when he joined Trump's presidential campaign.

Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 that he was pushing policies as part of his work in Ukraine 'at the highest levels of the U.S. government - the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department,' according to the documents.

He also said he had hired a 'leading international law firm with close ties to President Bush to support our client's interests,' but he did not identify the firm.

Manafort also said he was employing unidentified legal experts for the effort at leading universities and think tanks, including Duke University, New York University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Manafort did not disclose details about the lobbying work to the Justice Department during the period the contract was in place.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, people who lobby in the U.S. on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the department. Willfully failing to register is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, though the government rarely files criminal charges.

Deripaska owns Basic Element Co., which employs 200,000 people worldwide in the agriculture, aviation, construction, energy, financial services, insurance and manufacturing industries, and he runs one of the world's largest aluminum companies. Forbes estimated his net worth at $5.2 billion.

How much Deripaska paid Manafort in total is not clear, but people familiar with the relationship said money transfers to Manafort amounted to tens of millions of dollars and continued through at least 2009. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret payments publicly.

In strategy memos, Manafort proposed that Deripaska and Putin would benefit from lobbying Western governments, especially the U.S., to allow oligarchs to keep possession of formerly state-owned assets in Ukraine. He proposed building 'long term relationships' with Western journalists and a variety of measures to improve recruitment, communications and financial planning by pro-Russian parties in the region.

Manafort proposed extending his existing work in eastern Europe to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia, where he pledged to bolster the legitimacy of governments friendly to Putin and undercut anti-Russian figures through political campaigns, nonprofit front groups and media operations.

For the $10 million contract, Manafort did not use his public-facing consulting firm, Davis Manafort. Instead, he used a company, LOAV Ltd., that he had registered in Delaware in 1992. He listed LOAV as having the same address of his lobbying and consulting firms in Alexandria, Virginia. In other records, LOAV's address was listed as Manafort's home, also in Alexandria. Manafort sold the home in July 2015 for $1.4 million. He now owns an apartment in Trump Tower in New York, as well as other properties in Florida and New York.

'YACHTGATE': DERIPASKA'S PREVIOUS POLITICAL SCANDAL IN THE WEST In 2008, Deripaska was involved in another political scandal in the West, this time involving British Conservative MP George Osborne. Osborne's former university friend, financier Nathaniel Rothschild, made a shocking claim that Osborne tried to solicit a £50,000 donation from Deripaska while he was hosting the two at his villa in Corfu. British MP George Osborne was accused of trying to solicit £50,000 from Deripaska in 2008, claims which were later investigated and found baseless The alleged solicitation happened during a party on Deripaska's yacht, and therefore the scandal was called 'Yachtgate'. The Liberal Democrats urged the Electoral Commission to investigate the allegations, since any such donation would have been violating British law against political donations by foreign citizens. The Commission rejected the claim and said it found 'no information' to back the allegation. Advertisement

One strategy memo to Deripaska was written by Manafort and Rick Davis, his business partner at the time. In written responses to the AP, Davis said he did not know that his firm had proposed a plan to covertly promote the interests of the Russian government.

Davis said he believes Manafort used his name without his permission on the strategy memo.

'My name was on every piece of stationery used by the company and in every memo prior to 2006. It does not mean I had anything to do with the memo described,' Davis said.

He took a leave of absence from the firm in late 2006 to work on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Manafort's work with Deripaska continued for years, though they had a falling out laid bare in 2014 in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The billionaire gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable, according to legal filings by Deripaska's representatives. It said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.

Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Deripaska's representatives openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him. After Trump earned the nomination, Deripaska's representatives said they would no longer discuss the case.