People wait outside a branch of Bank of Cyprus before the reopening of the bank in Nicosia, capital of Cyprus, on March 28, 2013. (Xinhua/Stefanos Kouratzis)

NICOSIA, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Cypriot sources quoted by local media on Tuesday confirmed that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, two former associates of U.S. President Donald Trump, had laundered a huge amount of money through shell companies and foreign accounts in Cyprus.

However, they said their operations did not seem to be connected with Trump's presidential campaign as they were stopped a year before his candidacy was announced.

Manafort had been Trump's presidential campaign manager and Gates was a close associate.

They are both accused in the United States of colluding with Russians to tip the presidential election in favor of Trump.

A Bank of Cyprus source had said Manafort did not maintain accounts with the bank itself, but had opened accounts with the Cyprus Popular Bank, commonly known as Laiki, which was wound down as part of the 2013 Cyprus bail-out by the Eurogroup and the International Monetary Fund.

The source said the bank found out about the Laiki accounts after it was folded into the Bank of Cyprus in March, 2013.

He said most of the accounts had been closed by 2012, but the Bank of Cyprus inherited three accounts which were finally wound down in 2014, a year before Trump had announced his intention to run for president.

"The accounts were flagged and reported to the police anti-money laundering squad, MOKAS, before they were ultimately terminated because of suspicious activity," the source said.

Other sources said Manafort and Gates had sent millions of dollars to so-called shell offshore companies in Cyprus between 2005 and 2016 in support of Ukraine's former President Viktor Yanukovych which were not declared to American authorities.

Manafort's indictment lists 12 Cypriot companies which were used for transferring dirty money. Though some were closed, some of them are still active and managed by a law firm which had been named in the Panama Papers scandal.

The indictment said that 75 million U.S. dollars flowed through these accounts, and they funded Manafort and Gates's lifestyles in the United States.