A judge ordered Huma Abedin’s cousin, Omar Amanat, to be jailed immediately after he was convicted on Tuesday of fraud and was said to have a had a “disdain for the courts and legal process.”
Amanat, who invested millions with a Russian businessman, also supposedly tried to destroy emails that contained potential evidence, telling his brother to delete all his Yahoo emails because he was worried about Yahoo receiving a subpoena.
The indictment charges that Amanat convinced people to invest millions of dollars in a tech company called Kit Digital and lied to them to hide the fact that the company was hemorrhaging cash. “The evidence of their criminal schemes was so overwhelming that Amanat actually tried to fool the jury by introducing fake emails into the record as exculpatory ‘evidence’ in this trial,” acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said in a statement. Prosecutors said he re-purposed millions of dollars of the company’s money for his own personal use.
In 2013, Amanat partnered with Russian businessman Vladislov Doronin to purchase a high-end resort for over $350 million. Doronin moved from Russia to Switzerland to work for Marc Rich, who escaped the United States after he was indicted for fraud and illegal trading with Iran. Rich was pardoned by former President Bill Clinton on his last day in the White House. USA Todayreports:
Clinton's motive for pardoning Rich on his last day in office was questioned because Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, was a wealthy Democratic donor who made a $450,000 donation to Clinton's presidential library foundation and more than $100,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign.
Amanat, who is scheduled to be sentenced April 25, is the latest family member of Abedin's who is going to prison. A federal judge in New York sentenced Abedin’s husband, child sex predator and former Democrat congressman Anthony Weiner, to 21 months in prison for his crimes against a minor.
The investigation into Weiner came in response to a report from the Daily Mail that exposed Weiner's relationship with the 15-year-old girl. That investigation led the FBI to Weiner's laptop where they discovered 650,000 emails belonging to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, which triggered the FBI to reopen their criminal investigation into the corrupt Democratic candidate.