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Feb 18, 2024 · Charles McGonigal, a 22-year veteran of the FBI who oversaw national security investigations at the bureau’s New York field office, was sentenced Friday “to 28 months in prison followed by...
- Former high-level FBI official pleads guilty in ... - CNN
Charles McGonigal, a 22-year veteran of the FBI who retired...
- Ex-FBI counterintelligence chief pleads guilty to ... - CNN
CNN — The former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s...
- Former high-level FBI official pleads guilty in ... - CNN
Jan 23, 2023 · Charles McGonigal, ex-head of counterintel for the FBI in New York, was arrested for money laundering, violating Russia sanctions, and taking money from a foreign national.
- 2 min
- Jonathan Dienst,Tom Winter
Aug 15, 2023 · Charles McGonigal, a 22-year veteran of the FBI who retired in 2018, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act...
Sep 22, 2023 · CNN — The former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office pleaded guilty Friday in Washington, DC, in connection to a scheme to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars...
- Overview
- McGonigal's background
Washington — Charles McGonigal, the former top counterintelligence official at the FBI's New York office, was sentenced to more than four years in prison on Thursday for accepting secret payments from a sanctioned Russian oligarch and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
McGonigal pleaded guilty to a federal charge in New York in August to conspiring to violate a law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He admitted to helping Oleg Deripaska dig up dirt on a rival Russian oligarch and laundering money by concealing the source of the payments for that work.
"Charles McGonigal violated the trust his country placed in him by using his high-level position at the FBI to prepare for his future in business," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement after a judge handed down the sentence. "Once he left public service, he jeopardized our national security by providing services to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian tycoon who acts as Vladimir Putin's agent."
In addition to the prison sentence, McGonigal was ordered to pay a $40,000 fine, forfeit $17,500 and serve three years of supervised release. He has also been charged and pleaded guilty in a separate case in Washington.
The Justice Department sought a five-year sentence and $200,000 fine for the charge in the New York case, saying McGonigal "betrayed his country and manipulated a sanctions regime vital to its national security." Such a sentence would be a warning to other former national security officials who may consider "abusing their positions in the service of hostile foreign actors," the government wrote in a sentencing submission last week.
"It is not an overstatement to say that no one knew better the gravity of McGonigal's crimes than McGonigal himself," it said.
McGonigal spent more than two decades at the FBI, rising through the ranks to become its counterintelligence chief in New York before retiring in 2018. He worked on some of the top national security cases, from stopping a plot to bomb the New York City subway to WikiLeaks' release of a trove of classified documents.
"Mr. McGonigal's service to the United States has been truly extraordinary, and often at grave personal risk," his lawyers wrote in their sentencing submission last month.
Before McGonigal retired from the bureau, a former Russian diplomat, who later became a U.S. citizen and interpreter for courts and government offices in New York City, introduced him to an agent of Deripaska, according to the Justice Department.
Prosecutors said McGonigal had known that Deripaska was associated with a Russian intelligence agency, but continued a relationship with him. Months later, McGonigal received a classified list of oligarchs close to Putin who faced sanctions, prosecutors said.
McGonigal met with Deripaska in London and Vienna after he retired and connected him with a law firm to help get off the U.S. sanctions list, prosecutors said. He was later hired by Deripaska to investigate Vladimir Potanin, a rival oligarch. McGonigal used a subcontractor to locate files about Potanin on the dark web, and was negotiating a $3 million sale of those files when the FBI seized his phone, "effectively ending the scheme" in November 2021, according to prosecutors.
McGonigal pleaded guilty in the Washington case in September, admitting to concealing his contacts with foreign officials as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars that he accepted from a former employee of Albania's intelligence agency.
- Politics Reporter
- CBS News
FBI (1996-2018) Charles McGonigal (born June 23, 1968) [1] is a former American Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI's New York City field office.
Aug 15, 2023 · By Caitlin Yilek. August 15, 2023 / 2:24 PM EDT / CBS News. Washington — Charles McGonigal, the former top FBI counterintelligence official in New York, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal...
