PhotoFor five centuries, the Habsburgs dominated much of Central Europe, reaching from their ancestral base in Austria to eventually encompass a multiethnic and multilingual empire that collapsed only at the end of World War I. The name of the dynasty that ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire quickly became a trending topic on Friday evening, after the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election in the United States accused Paul Manafort Jr., President Trump’s former campaign chairman, of secretly paying a group of former European officials to lobby for Ukraine in 2012 and 2013, when its government was pro-Russian. Around 2012, according to the indictment released on Friday, Mr. Manafort and his colleague Rick Gates “secretly retained a group of former senior European politicians to take positions favorable to Ukraine, including by lobbying in the United States.”PhotoThey were informally called the Hapsburg Group, according to the indictment, which used an alternative spelling for the Habsburgs. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyAlthough the former politicians purported to provide “independent assessments,” according to the indictment, “in fact they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine.” Mr. Manafort used at least four offshore accounts to wire more than 2 million euros to pay the group of former politicians, according to the indictment.

Source: New York Times February 24, 2018 00:33 UTC