The former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office was charged in two separate indictments Monday for allegedly working with a sanctioned Russian oligarch after he retired and concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars he received from a former employee of an Albanian intelligence agency while he was a top official at the bureau.
The former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office was charged in two separate indictments Monday for allegedly working with a sanctioned Russian oligarch after he retired and concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars he received from a former employee of an Albanian intelligence agency while he was a top official at the bureau.
Charles McGonigal, a 22-year veteran of the FBI until he retired in 2018, was arrested Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport Saturday when returning from international travel, a source familiar with the arrest tells CNN.
The charges, announced by the US attorney’s offices in the Southern District of New York and Washington, DC, mark a dramatic fall for McGonigal. He is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan later Monday. His attorney said he will plead not guilty to the charges. His arraignment on the DC charges has not yet been scheduled.
McGonigal is facing charges in New York for violating US sanctions, conspiracy, and money laundering charges for working in 2021 with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who was sanctioned for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. Prosecutors allege McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov, a former Russian diplomat who has most recently worked as an interpreter in New York federal courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, violated US sanctions by digging up dirt on Deripaska’s rival at the time he was already sanctioned.
