Igor Fruman, who was indicted in October along with his pal Lev Parnas on campaign finance charges, was friendly with Manafort since at least 2008, according to two sources who spoke to The Daily Beast.
Manafort, who ran President Donald Trump's campaign in summer 2016, met Fruman while working for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine, and the pair spent time together in Kyiv, London and New York.
The pair even shared a lawyer, Kevin Downing, who initially represented Parnas and Fruman after their arrests.
Joseph Bondy, who now represents Parnas, told The Daily Beast that Manafort sent greetings from prison through Downing.
Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, communicated with Manafort and his lawyers after he began serving a prison term on tax fraud, bank fraud and other charges.
According to Bondy, Giuliani discussed the so-called "black ledger" documenting illegal foreign payments to Manafort, who hopes to prove it fraudulent in hopes of overturning his prison sentence.
Giuliani declined to comment on this report, but he previously told the Washington Post that he'd discussed the ledger with Manafort through his lawyer but didn't think he could exonerate his client's former campaign chairman.
The president's attorney said his examination of the black ledger led to his focus on Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
“What happened is that I was investigating, going back to last year, complaints that the Ukrainian people, several people in Ukraine, knew about a tremendous amount of collusion between Ukrainian officials, and Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee, including a completely fraudulent document that was produced, in order to begin the investigation of Manafort,” Giuliani told CNN in September.
“They were trying to get to us," he added. "But they were being blocked by the Ambassador who was Obama-appointee, in Ukraine, who was holding back this information. In the course of investigating that, I found out this incredible story about Joe Biden that he bribed the President of the Ukraine in order to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.”
Parnas said he and Fruman helped Giuliani dig up dirt on the Bidens, and they helped coordinate efforts to press Ukraine to announce an investigation of the former vice president and his son.
Manafort, Parnas and Fruman are also connected through Ukrainian oligarch Dmitryo Firtash, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. from Vienna -- where Parnas and Fruman were headed, and Giuliani was set to follow, the day they were arrested.
