Ari Blaff
Mon, January 23, 2023
Charles McGonigal, a former FBI official involved in the investigation of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, has been charged with violating sanctions and collaborating with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the Department of Justice announced Monday.
According to federal prosecutors, McGonigal received “concealed payments” from a Russian intelligence officer in exchange for his help in having sanctions targeting Deripaska lifted. McGonigal is being charged by the Federal District in Manhattan with additional counts relating to money laundering and conspiracy.
“Charles McGonigal, a former high-level FBI official, and Sergey Shestakov, a Court interpreter, violated U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. They both previously worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanctions removed, and, as public servants, they should have known better,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams wrote in a statement released Monday.
As chief of counterintelligence in the bureau’s New York City field office, McGonigal was among the first FBI officials to learn of the fateful conversation between a senior Trump campaign adviser and a foreign diplomat over the topic of Hillary Clinton’s emails, the Washington Free Beacon noted. Knowledge of that interaction proved crucial to the federal agency opening an investigation into the matter, which ultimately found there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Deripaska, a well-known aluminum magnate and close friend of President Vladimir Putin, was reportedly a client of Paul Manafort, an attorney and former Trump presidential campaign consultant.
Deripaska was recently the subject of a 60 Minutes segment alongside other prominent Russian oligarchs known for laundering illicit funds through the European Union member country of Cyprus. According to the investigation, Deripaska arranged for a child of his to be born in the United States in an attempt to bypass the sanctions imposed upon him.
The indictment, which also outlined charges against FBI interpreter Sergey Shestakov, prompted the federal agency to release a statement condemning the abuse of power.
“Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska perform global malign influence on behalf of the Kremlin and are associated with acts of bribery, extortion, and violence,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael Driscoll noted in a statement. “There are no exceptions for anyone, including a former FBI official like Mr. McGonigal.”
McGonigal legal team, headed by Seth DuCharme, remained adamant about his client’s innocence.
“Charlie served the United States capably, effectively, for decades,” DuCharme told the New York Times. “We have closely reviewed the accusations made by the government and we look forward to receiving discovery so we can get a view on what the evidence is upon which the government intends to rely.”
DuCharme added that McGonigal plans to enter a plea of not guilty before a federal court appearance in Manhattan later Monday.
McGonigal was arrested at JFK Airport in New York City on Saturday upon returning from recent travels to Sri Lanka.
Ex-FBI official worked for sanctioned Russian oligarch, prosecutors say
Mon, January 23, 2023
By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A former top FBI official was charged on Monday with working for sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, as U.S. prosecutors ramp up efforts to enforce sanctions on Russian officials and police their alleged enablers.
Charles McGonigal, who led the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York before retiring in 2018, pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts including sanctions violations and money laundering at a hearing in Manhattan federal court.
He was released on $500,000 bond, following his arrest over the weekend.
Prosecutors said McGonigal, 54, in 2021 received concealed payments from Deripaska, who was sanctioned in 2018, in exchange for investigating a rival oligarch.
McGonigal was also charged with unsuccessfully pushing in 2019 to lift sanctions against Deripaska.
Sanctions "must be enforced equally against all U.S. citizens in order to be successful," FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael Driscoll said in a statement. "There are no exceptions for anyone, including a former FBI official."
Separately on Monday, federal prosecutors in Washington said McGonigal received $225,000 in cash from a former member of Albania's intelligence service, who had been a source in an investigation into foreign political lobbying that McGonigal was supervising.
McGonigal faces nine counts in that case, including making false statements to conceal from the FBI the nature of his relationship with the person.
"This is obviously a distressing day for Mr McGonigal and his family," the defendant's lawyer Seth DuCharme told reporters after the Manhattan hearing. "We'll review the evidence, we'll closely scrutinize it, and we have a lot of confidence in Mr McGonigal."
Deripaska, the founder of Russian aluminum company Rusal, was among two dozen Russian oligarchs and government officials blacklisted by Washington in 2018 in reaction to Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
He and the Kremlin have denied any election interference.
Also charged in the Manhattan case was Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet diplomat who later became an American citizen and Russian language interpreter for U.S. courts and government agencies.
Prosecutors said Shestakov he worked with McGonigal to help Deripaska, and made false statements to investigators.
Shestakov pleaded not guilty on Monday and was released on $200,000 bond.
The enforcement of sanctions are part of U.S. efforts to pressure Moscow to stop its war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a "special military operation."
Deripaska was charged last September with violating the sanctions against him by arranging to have his children born in the United States.
The following month, British businessman Graham Bonham-Carter was charged with conspiring to violate sanctions by trying to move Deripaska's artwork out of the United States.
Deripaska is at large, and Bonham-Carter is contesting extradition to the United States.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien, Bill Berkrot, Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy)
US: Ex-FBI counterintelligence agent aided Russian oligarch
Russian businessman and founder of RUSAL company Oleg Deripaska speaks on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, June 17, 2022. A former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official has been indicted on charges he helped the Russian oligarch in violation of U.S. sanctions. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, File)
MICHAEL R. SISAK and ERIC TUCKER
Mon, January 23, 2023
NEW YORK (AP) — A former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official who investigated Russian oligarchs has been indicted on charges he secretly worked for one, in violation of U.S. sanctions. The official was also charged, in a separate indictment, with taking cash from a former foreign security officer.
Charles McGonigal, the special agent in charge of 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 big guy” and “the client.”
McGonigal, who had supervised and participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska, worked to have Deripaska’s sanctions lifted in 2019 and took money from him in 2021 to investigate a rival oligarch, the Justice Department said.
The FBI investigated McGonigal, showing a willingness to go after one of its own. Nonetheless, the indictment is an unwelcome headline for the FBI at a time when the bureau is entangled in separate, politically charged investigations — the handling of classified documents by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump — as newly ascendant Republicans in Congress pledge to investigate high-profile FBI and Justice Department decisions.
McGonigal and the interpreter, Sergey Shestakov were arrested Saturday — McGonigal after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport and Shestakov at his home in Morris, Connecticut — and held at a federal jail in Brooklyn. They both pleaded not guilty Monday and were released on bail.
McGonigal, 54, and Shestakov, 69, are charged with violating and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, conspiring to commit money laundering and money laundering. Shestakov is also charged with making material misstatements to the FBI.
McGonigal "has had a long, distinguished career with the FBI,” his lawyer, Seth DuCharme, told reporters when he left court with McGonigal following his arraignment.
“This is obviously a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his family, but we’ll review the evidence, we’ll closely scrutinize it and we have a lot of confidence in Mr. McGonigal," said DuCharme, the former top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.
Messages seeking comment were left for lawyers for Shestakov and Deripaska.
McGonigal was separately charged in federal court in Washington, D.C. with concealing at least $225,000 in cash he allegedly received from a former Albanian intelligence official while working for the FBI.
The indictment does not charge or characterize the payment to McGonigal as a bribe, but federal prosecutors say that, while hiding the payment from the FBI, he took actions as an FBI supervisor that were aimed at the ex-intelligence official's financial benefit.
They included proposing that a pharmaceutical company pay the man’s company $500,000 in exchange for scheduling a business meeting involving a representative from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.
In a bureau-wide email Monday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said McGonigal’s alleged conduct “is entirely inconsistent with what I see from the men and women of the FBI who demonstrate every day through their actions that they're worthy of the public’s trust.”
The U.S. Treasury Department added Deripaska to its sanctions list in 2018 for purported ties to the Russian government and Russia’s energy 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 ensure his child was born in the United States.
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 functioned as an agent for Deripaska, the indictment said. That person is not named in court papers but the Justice Department says he was “rumored in public media reports to be a Russian intelligence officer.”
According to the indictment, Shestakov asked McGonigal for help getting the agent’s daughter an internship in the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism and intelligence units. McGonigal agreed, prosecutors say, and told a police department contact that, “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 FBI that the woman claimed to have an “unusually close relationship” with an FBI agent whom, she said, had given her access to confidential FBI files. The sergeant felt it was “unusual for a college student to receive such special treatment from the NYPD and FBI,” the indictment said.
After retiring from the FBI, according to the indictment, McGonigal went to work in 2019 as a consultant and investigator for an international law firm seeking to reverse Deripaska’s sanctions, a process known as “delisting.”
The law firm paid McGonigal $25,000 through a Shestakov-owned corporation, prosecutors say, though the work was ultimately interrupted by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, according to the indictment, Deripaska’s agent enlisted McGonigal and Shestakov to dig up dirt on a rival oligarch, whom Deripaska was fighting for control of a large Russian corporation, in exchange for $51,280 up front and $41,790 per month 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 hiding from the FBI key details of a 2017 trip he took to Albania with the former Albanian intelligence official who is alleged to have given him at least $225,000.
Once there, according to the Justice Department, McGonigal met with Albania’s prime minister and urged caution in awarding oil field drilling licenses in the country to Russian front companies. McGonigal’s Albanian contacts had a financial interest in those decisions.
In an example of how McGonigal allegedly blurred personal gain with professional responsibilities, prosecutors in Washington say he “caused” the FBI’s New York office to open a criminal lobbying investigation in which the former Albanian intelligence official was to serve as a confidential human source.
McGonigal did so, prosecutors allege, without revealing to the FBI or Justice Department his financial connections to the man.
__
Eric Tucker reported from Washington. Jim Mustian and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.
__
Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak and Eric Tucker at twitter.com/etuckerAP. Send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.
No comments:
Post a Comment