The investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 US election by the special counsel Robert Mueller has brought to light a secretly financed pro-Russian lobbying effort that employed former senior European politicians.



According to new charges filed in a Virginia court on Friday, the Europeans known as the “Hapsburg Group” were led by a “former European chancellor” and allegedly covertly paid by Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager.

At the time of the alleged payments, in 2012 and 2013, Manafort was working on behalf of the then Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his pro-Moscow Party of Regions.

In the new charges against Manafort and his business partner, the Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, Mueller stated that the two men “secretly retained a group of former senior European politicians to take positions favourable to Ukraine, including by lobbying in the United States”.

“The plan was for the former politicians, informally called the ‘Hapsburg Group’ [an alternative spelling of Habsburg, the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian empire] to appear to be providing their independent assessments of Government of Ukraine actions, when in fact they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine.”

In a June 2012 memo, labeled “Eyes Only”, Manafort outlined what he described as a “Super VIP” part of the effort, to “assemble a small group of high-level European highly influential champions and politically credible friends who can act informally and without any visible relationship with the Government of Ukraine”.

The group was to managed by a “former European chancellor” who is referred to on the charge sheet as “Foreign Politician A”.

Chancellor is the title of the head of government in Germany and Austria. Justice department filings – which were filed retroactively – indicate that it was the former Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer who went to meet congressmen in 2013 accompanied by two lobbyists working for a company called Mercury.

The company was one of two lobbying firms hired to represent the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels thinktank Mueller’s office says was set up by Manafort and Gates to act as a front for Yanukovych. The news was first reported by Politico.

Gusenbauer told die Presse he had two coffees with Manafort, one in the US and one in Europe, and did not receive money for it “or at least not consciously so”. He said he had been paid by a US or British company for his engagement on Ukrainian issues but could not remember which.

The Social Democrat who was chancellor in 2007 and 2008 told the Austrian Press Agency he had never worked on behalf of Yanukovych or the Party of Regions, but had advocated a Europe-facing future for Ukraine.

A Mercury lobbyist also accompanied the former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi to meetings on Capitol Hill a few months before Gusenbauer.

Romano Prodi. Photograph: Simona Granati - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

A Prodi spokeswoman emphasised that the former prime minister had no recollection of being in Washington or meeting with lawmakers.

Prodi then defended his work in a statement, saying he had worked for “many years” to improve relations between the European Union and Ukraine and had numerous meetings and given public speeches – some of them paid - in various European capitals.

“These are serious and perfectly consistent initiatives for a former president of the European Commission,” the statement said.

Prodi said he did not recall the March 2013 meetings in Washington that were noted in the Politico story but said he was sure “that they were simply meant as a chance to expose his point of view on the situation in Ukraine”.

Prodi denied lobbying or being part of a “secret lobby” and said he had not received any money for the activities.

A spokeswoman for Prodi would not answer questions about whether Prodi knew Manafort. The former prime minister told the New York Times he had received funds from Gusenbauer for their joint work on Ukraine and the EU.

Prodi was president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. In 2013 – the year Prodi met US lawmakers, according to the lobbyist filing – he wrote an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor in which he called Ukraine an important source of economic growth and energy security for Europe “as well as a bridge to Russia”.



Prodi’s ties to Russia have been a source of controversy and intrigue in Italy. He staunchly denied an unfounded and unproven allegation made in 2006 by Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian state security official who was murdered in London later that year, that he had links to the Soviet KGB.

Prodi threatened to sue Litvinenko and an inquiry into the matter, led by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, was shut down.

After the filing of new indictment in Washington, alleging large-scale bank and tax fraud on top of money-laundering and other charges filed in October, Gates struck a plea agreement with Mueller, agreeing to cooperate with the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign, on which he was a senior official, and the Kremlin.



Manafort, who is under house arrest, issued a statement saying: “Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence. I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise.”

He added: “This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me.”