A former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official who investigated Russian oligarchs has been indicted on fees he secretly labored for one, in violation of U.S. sanctions. The official was additionally charged, in a separate indictment, with taking money from a former overseas safety officer.
Charles McGonigal, the particular agent answerable for the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York from 2016 to 2018, is accused in an indictment unsealed Monday of working with a former Soviet diplomat-turned-Russian interpreter on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire they purportedly referred to in code as “the large man” and “the consumer.”
McGonigal, who had supervised and took part in investigations of Russian oligarchs, together with Deripaska, labored to have Deripaska’s sanctions lifted in 2019 and took cash from him in 2021 to analyze a rival oligarch, the Justice Division mentioned.
The FBI investigated McGonigal, exhibiting a willingness to go after considered one of its personal. Nonetheless, the indictment is an unwelcome headline for the FBI at a time when the bureau is entangled in separate, politically charged investigations — the dealing with of categorised paperwork by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump — as newly ascendant Republicans in Congress pledge to analyze high-profile FBI and Justice Division selections.
McGonigal and the interpreter, Sergey Shestakov had been arrested Saturday — McGonigal after touchdown at John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport and Shestakov at his residence in Morris, Connecticut — and held at a federal jail in Brooklyn. They each pleaded not responsible Monday and had been launched on bail.
McGonigal, 54, and Shestakov, 69, are charged with violating and conspiring to violate the Worldwide Emergency Financial Powers Act, conspiring to commit cash laundering and cash laundering. Shestakov can be charged with making materials misstatements to the FBI.
McGonigal “has had an extended, distinguished profession with the FBI,” his lawyer, Seth DuCharme, advised reporters when he left courtroom with McGonigal following his arraignment.
“That is clearly a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his household, however we’ll overview the proof, we’ll carefully scrutinize it and we’ve lots of confidence in Mr. McGonigal,” mentioned DuCharme, the previous high federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.
Messages searching for remark had been left for attorneys for Shestakov and Deripaska.
McGonigal was individually charged in federal courtroom in Washington, D.C. with concealing at the very least $225,000 in money he allegedly obtained from a former Albanian intelligence official whereas working for the FBI.
The indictment doesn’t cost or characterize the cost to McGonigal as a bribe, however federal prosecutors say that, whereas hiding the cost from the FBI, he took actions as an FBI supervisor that had been aimed on the ex-intelligence official’s monetary profit.
They included proposing {that a} pharmaceutical firm pay the person’s firm $500,000 in trade for scheduling a enterprise assembly involving a consultant from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.
In a bureau-wide e mail Monday, FBI Director Christopher Wray mentioned McGonigal’s alleged conduct “is completely inconsistent with what I see from the women and men of the FBI who exhibit every single day by their actions that they’re worthy of the general public’s belief.”
The U.S. Treasury Division added Deripaska to its sanctions record in 2018 for purported ties to the Russian authorities and Russia’s vitality sector amid Russia’s ongoing threats to Ukraine.
In September, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Deripaska and three associates with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by plotting to make sure his little one was born in the US.
Shestakov, who labored as an interpreter for federal courts and prosecutors in New York Metropolis after retiring as a diplomat in 1993, helped join McGonigal to Deripaska, in accordance with the indictment.
In 2018, whereas McGonigal was nonetheless working for the FBI, Shestakov launched him to a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who functioned as an agent for Deripaska, the indictment mentioned. That particular person shouldn’t be named in courtroom papers however the Justice Division says he was “rumored in public media experiences to be a Russian intelligence officer.”
In accordance with the indictment, Shestakov requested McGonigal for assist getting the agent’s daughter an internship within the New York Police Division’s counterterrorism and intelligence items. McGonigal agreed, prosecutors say, and advised a police division contact that, “I’ve an curiosity in her father for quite a few causes.”
In accordance with the indictment, a police sergeant subsequently reported to the NYPD and FBI that the girl claimed to have an “unusually shut relationship” with an FBI agent whom, she mentioned, had given her entry to confidential FBI information. The sergeant felt it was “uncommon for a school pupil to obtain such particular remedy from the NYPD and FBI,” the indictment mentioned.
After retiring from the FBI, in accordance with the indictment, McGonigal went to work in 2019 as a guide and investigator for a world legislation agency searching for to reverse Deripaska’s sanctions, a course of generally known as “delisting.”
The legislation agency paid McGonigal $25,000 by a Shestakov-owned company, prosecutors say, although the work was in the end interrupted by components such because the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, in accordance with the indictment, Deripaska’s agent enlisted McGonigal and Shestakov to dig up grime on a rival oligarch, whom Deripaska was combating for management of a giant Russian company, in trade for $51,280 up entrance and $41,790 monthly paid by way of a Russian financial institution to a New Jersey firm owned by McGonigal’s good friend. McGonigal saved his good friend in the dead of night concerning the true nature of the funds, prosecutors say.
McGonigal can be accused of hiding from the FBI key particulars of a 2017 journey he took to Albania with the previous Albanian intelligence official who’s alleged to have given him at the very least $225,000.
As soon as there, in accordance with the Justice Division, McGonigal met with Albania’s prime minister and urged warning in awarding oil area drilling licenses within the nation to Russian entrance firms. McGonigal’s Albanian contacts had a monetary curiosity in these selections.
In an instance of how McGonigal allegedly blurred private achieve with skilled obligations, prosecutors in Washington say he “triggered” the FBI’s New York workplace to open a felony lobbying investigation through which the previous Albanian intelligence official was to function a confidential human supply.
McGonigal did so, prosecutors allege, with out revealing to the FBI or Justice Division his monetary connections to the person.
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Eric Tucker reported from Washington. Jim Mustian and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.
