The former FBI counterintelligence agent accused of helping a Russian oligarch evade US sanctions has been released on bail.
Charles McGonigal, 54, was released Monday on $500,000 personal bail by Manhattan federal court after being arrested Saturday on charges on two newly unsealed charges.
One of the indictments filed in Manhattan accused McGonigal of violating US sanctions laws by working for Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire sidekick of Vladimir Putin after he left the FBI in 2018.
The other indictments filed in Washington DC state that McGonigal accepted a $225,000 cash bribe from an unnamed former Albanian intelligence agent while he headed the counterintelligence division at the FBI’s New York field office.
Accompanied by the ex-spy, McGonigal secretly met with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in September 2017, where he presented Rama with “FBI paraphernalia” and offered advice on lucrative oil drilling licenses, the indictment says.
Charles McGonigal and his wife exit Manhattan federal court after he was charged with violating US sanctions and released on $500,000 bail
McGonigal secretly met with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama (above) in September 2017, where he presented Rama with “FBI paraphernalia,” the indictment said
McGonigal was released on signed bail, meaning the money did not have to be posted in advance, which was signed by him and two other unidentified people.
As he left court, McGonigal’s attorney, Seth DuCharme, told reporters his client had “a long, distinguished career with the FBI.”
“This is obviously a worrying day for Mr. McGonigal and his family, but we will review the evidence, we will review it closely, and we have great faith in Mr. McGonigal,” said DuCharme, the former Brooklyn chief attorney.
McGonigal worked for the FBI from 1996 until his retirement in 2018, and from 2016 until his retirement from the FBI he was the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in the New York Field Office.
He played a role in sensitive and high-profile investigations, including Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s alleged ties to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
He also led an FBI team investigating why CIA whistleblowers were being arrested and killed in China – an investigation that led to the arrest and conviction of Chinese double agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee.
Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska was sanctioned by the US and then charged with violating it last year. Pictured: With Vladimir Putin in 2017
Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office, exits Manhattan Federal Court in New York City on Monday
Now, however, McGonigal is accused of weaving his own web of deception in several alleged schemes to profit from illegal foreign payments.
In a bureau-wide email Monday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said McGonigal’s alleged behavior “is utterly inconsistent with what I see from the FBI’s men and women, who demonstrate through their actions every day that they have the trust of the… deserve publicity.’
The intriguing indictment accused him of working with a former Soviet diplomat-turned-Russian interpreter on behalf of Deripaska, a Russian billionaire whom they allegedly coded as “the big guy” and “the client.”
McGonigal, who oversaw and participated in investigations into Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska, campaigned to have sanctions lifted against Deripaska in 2019 and took money from him to investigate a rival oligarch in 2021, the Justice Department said.
McGonigal and interpreter Sergey Shestakov were arrested Saturday — McGonigal after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport and Shestakov at his home in Morris, Connecticut.
Shestakov, who worked as an interpreter for federal courts and prosecutors in New York City after retiring as a diplomat in 1993, helped connect McGonigal to Deripaska, according to the indictment.
In 2018, while McGonigal was still working for the FBI, Shestakov introduced him to a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who acted as an agent for Deripaska, the indictment says.
That person is not named in the court filings, but the Justice Ministry says he was “rumored to be a Russian intelligence officer in public media reports.”
According to the indictment, Shestakov asked McGonigal for help in getting the agent’s daughter an internship in the New York City Police Department’s counterterrorism and intelligence units. McGonigal agreed, prosecutors say, telling a police department contact, “I have an interest in her father for a number of reasons.”
According to the indictment, a police sergeant subsequently reported to the NYPD and the FBI that the woman claimed to have an “unusually close relationship” with an FBI agent who she said had given her access to confidential FBI files.
The sergeant said it was “unusual for a college student to receive such special treatment from the NYPD and FBI,” the indictment said.
After leaving the FBI, McGonigal went to work as a consultant and investigator for an international law firm to reverse Deripaska’s sanctions, a process known as “delisting,” according to the 2019 indictment.
The law firm paid McGonigal $25,000 through a Shestakov-owned company, prosecutors say, although work was ultimately disrupted by factors including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Deripaska, 55, is one of the few oligarchs who has criticized Putin for instigating a war in Ukraine, calling it madness
In 2021, the FBI raided Deripaska’s $15 million Washington DC home (pictured), his $42.5 million estate on the Upper East Side and his $4.5 million West townhouse Village
In 2021, according to the indictment, Deripaska’s agent hired McGonigal and Shestakov to dig up dirt on a rival oligarch Deripaska was fighting for control of a major Russian company in exchange for $51,280 upfront and $41,790 a month, the were paid via a Russian bank to a New Jersey company owned by McGonigal’s friend. McGonigal kept his friend in the dark about the true nature of the payments, prosecutors say.
McGonigal is also accused of withholding from the FBI key details of a trip he made to Albania in 2017 with the former Albanian intelligence official, who allegedly gave him at least $225,000 in three separate cash payments.
Once there, McGonigal met with the Albanian prime minister, according to the Justice Department, and urged caution when granting drilling licenses for oil fields in the country to Russian front companies. McGonigal’s Albanian contacts had a financial interest in these decisions.
In an example of how McGonigal allegedly confused personal gain with professional responsibility, prosecutors in Washington say he “caged” the FBI’s New York office to launch a criminal lobbying investigation that identified the former Albanian intelligence operative as a confidential human source should serve .
McGonigal did so, prosecutors claim, without disclosing his financial ties to the man to the FBI or the Justice Department.