By the time he retired, Charles McGonigal had enjoyed a long and prestigious career as head of the FBI’s counter-espionage agency in New York. He was arrested this weekend and accused of helping for money one of the Russian oligarchs he had been investigating for years: Oleg Deripaska, a magnate who for years was very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in 2018, was investigating a rival Deripaska oligarch while still working for the federal agency for which he received covert payments, according to the indictment released Monday in Washington. Overall, he is suspected of violating sanctions imposed by the United States, two suspected conspiracy and one suspected money launderer.
Deripaska, a man who made his immense fortune in the aluminum industry, was one of Putin’s inner circle but seemed to fall out of favor last summer when he called the war a “colossal mistake” and the authorities launched various lawsuits against his assets of almost one billion euros. The US holds him suspected of money laundering, extortion and illegal wiretapping. In 2022, the FBI accused him of violating Washington’s sanctions against Russia.
The tycoon was related to Paul Manafort, who ran Donald Trump’s campaign for a few months in 2016. Manafort was convicted of fraud, though Trump pardoned him in the final weeks of his presidency. “Mr. McGonigal betrayed his solemn oath to the United States for his personal gain and at the expense of our national security,” said FBI Deputy Director Donald Alway.
According to the indictment, the official, who was responsible, among other things, for investigating possible violations of US sanctions by Russian magnates, is said to have worked with a person who was an agent of the secret services of a foreign country between 2017 and 2018 and then had businesses in Europe. She traveled with him, received cash payments, and never reported their relationship to the FBI.
After leaving federal agency, he began working with Deripaska; with an associate of the tycoon, Sergei Shestakov, a Russian-nationalized American who worked as a translator in the New York courts; and with a third person. Shestakov, the third person and the former official tried to hide Deripaska’s involvement through forged signatures, the use of shell companies and other means.
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Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, has pointed out that McGonigal and the interpreter “violated US sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch under US sanctions provide”. “Both had previously worked with him to try to get the sanctions lifted and, as officers, both should have known what they were doing,” prosecutors argue.
McGonigal began working for the FBI in 1996. First he was assigned to the New York office, investigating Russian counterintelligence and organized crime. He also worked on the investigations into the 1998 terrorist attacks on the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the September 11, 2001 attacks. After heading the agency’s Coordination Department for Countering Foreign Cyberespionage, he was appointed to the Bureau’s headquarters in Washington Appointed Special Agent of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York in 2016.
“The FBI advocates the use of economic sanctions designed to protect the United States and our allies, particularly from hostile activities by a foreign government and its actors. Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska wield malicious influence around the world on behalf of the Kremlin and have been linked to acts of violence, extortion and bribery.”
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