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Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas in the »Trump International Hotel« in Washington DC 2019
Photo: Aram Roston / REUTERS
A court in New York City has convicted a former business partner of Trump confidante Rudy Giuliani for making illegal campaign donations.
Prosecutors in Manhattan announced Friday that the jury had unanimously found Lev Parnas and a co-defendant guilty.
Together with him, the American businessman and native Ukrainian Parnas wanted to gain influence among politicians and candidates with illegal donations before the congressional election in 2018 - also in favor of Trump.
The background was business interests.
The court did not initially set a date for the sentence to be pronounced for Parnas.
The judge denied a prosecutor's motion to arrest Parnas and his co-defendant.
According to the judge, the defendants had sufficiently demonstrated that there was no risk of flight.
Parnas had incriminated the former US President Donald Trump in his impeachment proceedings in January. Trump was accused in the trial of urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi to investigate his political rival Joe Biden in order to influence the 2020 US presidential election in his favor. Giuliani is said to have tried to find incriminating material on Biden in Ukraine. Parnas is said to have played a central role in this. The efforts were not successful. The Democrat Biden won the election and has been President of the USA since January. The majority in the US Senate necessary for a conviction of Trump in the impeachment proceedings did not come about at the time.
Giuliani was Mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001.
Before that, in the 1980s, he worked as a public prosecutor.
During Trump's presidency, Giuliani acted as an advisor and later as Trump's personal lawyer.
However, he recently lost his license to practice law because of false statements in court in connection with the last US presidential election.
In the process, Giuliani was not charged with any crime and he denies wrongdoing.
jso / dpa / Reuters