A United States court on Wednesday ordered President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort to serve an additional 43 months in prison for conspiracy, AP reported. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to 47 months in prison for tax crimes and bank fraud, AFP reported.

Manafort now faces seven-and-a-half years in prison. “I am sorry for what I have done,” Manafort told the court. “Let me be very clear, I accept the responsibility for the acts that caused me to be here today.”

The crimes were revealed during an investigation into the alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

Advertisement

“It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the amount of money involved,” said Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Federal District Court in Washington, according to The New York Times. “A significant portion of his career has been spent gaming the system.”

The first sentence is the longest given to any defendant in Robert Mueller’s investigation, reported CNN. Mueller is the special counsel overseeing the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and whether Trump campaign figures were complicit.

Manafort was convicted last year for defrauding banks and the government, and failing to pay taxes on millions of dollars in income he earned from Ukrainian political consulting.

Advertisement

Manafort is one of the six top associates of Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign to be charged in the Mueller investigation. Judge TS Ellis III of the US District Court in Virginia had said Manafort’s crimes were “very serious”, but following the guidelines would have resulted in an unduly harsh punishment, The New York Times reported.

The court had also ordered to pay a fine of $50,000 (Rs 35.04 lakh) and to serve three years of supervised release. He will also have to pay restitution of at least $24 million (Rs 168.22 crore).