This time, the FBI’s New York counterintelligence agents went after a suspect they knew very well. Her commitment was to her former boss, Charles McGonigal, who headed the New York branch of the anti-espionage department for 22 years until he left the service in 2018. McGonigal is well known in security circles; among other things, he had led the FBI’s investigation into Wikileaks.
The unusual operation took place on Saturday, and the federal police informed the public about it on Monday. The news startled Washington because it raises fears that the Kremlin’s arm is reaching deep into American security agencies. McGonigal is accused of illegally assisting Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska after leaving the FBI.
Deripaska of all people: As an employee of the Federal Police, McGonigal himself conducted the investigations into the Russian aluminum magnate. He was also still in office when, according to the US Department of Justice, he accepted a total of $225,000 from a man who had once worked for the Albanian intelligence service.
At a court hearing in New York on Monday, McGonigal announced through his lawyers that he was innocent. The 54-year-old was released on bail. He faces up to 80 years in prison if found guilty.
Connection to the Trump investigation
The US authorities imposed sanctions on Deripaska in 2018. They justified this with a series of Russian misdeeds: the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, support for Syria’s dictator Bashar el-Assad and a wave of cyber attacks. Deripaska was one of seven oligarchs accused by the United States of carrying out “malicious Russian activities” on behalf of the Kremlin around the world, including using intimidation, blackmail and bribery.
At the time, McGonigal was on the FBI’s Deripaska dossier. A little later, according to the investigators, he himself accepted money from the oligarch to spy on one of his Russian rivals, whom the Ministry of Justice did not name on Monday. As a former FBI agent of high repute, McGonigal was well connected and had access to information about FBI-CIA cooperation, so he was loud Washington Post in the know about intelligence actions against Russia. According to investigators, the former FBI agent also tried to have Deripaska removed from the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list.
The connection between the two may go back much further. McGonigal was involved in the investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election: his team questioned a Trump adviser who had lied about his contacts with Russians. Deripaska, in turn, had done business with Trump’s campaign director Paul Manafort, who made millions from it.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller found in 2019 that the Trump campaign had not worked with the Russians. Democrats are now questioning whether McGonigal could have influenced the process. Because back in 2018, while still being paid by the FBI, he did an employee of Deripaska a favor by arranging an internship with the New York police for his daughter. The employee is said to have been a Kremlin agent, and the daughter was given access to classified information.
Compensation smuggled through front companies
According to investigators, McGonigal was conspiring with a former Russian diplomat named Sergey Shestakov, whom federal police have now also arrested. The 69-year-old Shestakov was already a diplomat in New York during Soviet times; after leaving the official Russian services, he worked as a translator in American courts and received citizenship. Together, the two smuggled Deripaska’s compensation through front companies so US authorities wouldn’t take notice. According to the authorities, they violated the sanctions regulations and laundered money, among other things.
Although Deripaska has spoken out against Russia’s war in Ukraine, he has never spoken directly against the ruler Vladimir Putin. For this he has repeatedly tried to circumvent the sanctions provisions, which is why he is facing charges in both the USA and Great Britain. His girlfriend Ekaterina Voronina also got into trouble with the US judiciary when she tried to enter the United States while pregnant. She wanted to give birth to their child in the United States so that it would receive American citizenship.
Link to Trump’s campaign
McGonigal also accuses the FBI of accepting a bribe from a former Albanian intelligence officer and doing him favors in return. He concealed the relationship from the federal police, as well as the fact that he knew Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama personally. As a favor, McGonigal initiated, among other things, an FBI investigation against an American lobbyist who supported Rama’s political opponents.
It is rare for senior FBI agents to be accused of such crimes; the most recent known case began five years ago with an investigation into interim director Andrew McCabe that eventually ended in nothing. For the federal police, the McGonigal case is another blow. Trump accuses the agency of unfairly harassing him, first with the investigation into the Russia affair, then for his role in slowing down the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election, and finally for the raid on those hiding in Mar-a-Lago secret documents.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, on the other hand, took the arrest of MGonigal as an opportunity to praise his own work. “We also apply the highest standards to ourselves,” he said in a statement.