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The fresh counts could make it harder for Manafort to avoid jail before he goes on trial for alleged financial crimes that largely predate his time on the Trump campaign.

"Going to the grand jury for a superseding indictment underlines how serious the government is about Manafort's conduct,'' said Joyce Vance, a US attorney in Alabama during the Obama administration. "A defendant in a drug case would have his release revoked and be sent to jail pending trial for violating the terms of his release like this."

The new charges revolve around allegations that Manafort, 69, and Kilimnik, 47, tried to influence two public relations executives who were involved in lobbying work in 2012 on behalf ot the Ukraine government.

According to court filings, after Manafort was charged in February with failing to follow legal requirements to register as a lobbyist on behalf of a foreign government, he and Kilimnik repeatedly contacted the two executives to emphasise that their past work together did not involve American officials, and therefore did not constitute lobbying in the US.

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Manafort allegedly sent one of the executives a text that said: "We should talk. I have made clear that they worked in Europe."

Kilimnik, according to court papers, wrote a message to the other executive two days later saying: "Basically P wants to give him a quick summary that he says to everybody (which is true) that our friends never lobbied in the US, and the purpose of the program was EU."

Prosecutors say the "P" in the message refers to Manafort, and that the assertions in the texts are untrue.

Robert Mueller's office filed court papers Monday accusing Manafort of witness tampering. Manafort had been close to getting court approval for a $10 million bail deal that would permit him to remain on electronic monitoring at home. He has been charged with money laundering, tax and bank fraud, and conspiracy charges in two federal cases as part of Mueller's ongoing probe. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

Sending Manafort to jail ahead of his trial would intensify the pressure on him to reach a plea deal with prosecutors. In white-collar investigations, agents and prosecutors often try to turn defendants into witnesses against other suspects, "flipping" those people to climb higher up the organization. Manafort has repeatedly declared his intention to fight the charges in both jurisdictions.

The alleged cover-up stems from work Manafort, Kilimnik and others did with former European politicians referred to informally as the "Hapsburg group", to advocate on Ukraine's behalf to US and European officials.

The indictment charges that former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych and his political party retained lobbyists through Manafort to serve as intermediaries with the former European politicians. The politicians lobbied members of Congress and executive branch officials on Ukraine in coordination with Manafort and his longtime deputy and former co-defendant Rick Gates, according to prosecutors. Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators earlier this year in a cooperation deal with the government.

The FBI has assessed that Kilimnik had ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, including during the 2016 presidential campaign when Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were in contact with him, prosecutors have said in court filings. Gates has said he understood the associate to a former officer with the Russian military intelligence service, prosecutors said, and others who worked with Manafort in Ukraine said that Kilimnik did not hide his intelligence background. Kilimnik has denied such ties.

Washington Post