YOU WILL NYET BELIEVE THIS!
FBI agent who probed fake ‘Russiagate’ Trump case arrested — for helping RUSSIAN oligarch
Charles McGonigal was one of the FBI agents assigned to see if Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia — allegations that were proven false by the Mueller Report. Now McGonigal (above) has been arrested and charged with secretly trying to help Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (inset above) avoid American sanctions. McGonigal faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted.
A former top FBI counterintelligence agent based in New York who investigated the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia in 2016 is accused of illegally working for — a Russian!
Charles McGonigal was charged with money laundering and violating US sanctions law by working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the Justice Department said Monday.
McGonigal, who led the bureau’s NYC counterintelligence division between 2016 and his retirement in 2018, was arrested Saturday evening at JFK Airport. He pleaded not guilty to four counts in Manhattan federal court Monday and was released on $500,000 bond.
Sergey Shestakov, a court interpreter who also worked for Deripaska, was also arrested Saturday at his home in Connecticut. He pleaded not guilty to five counts Monday and was released on $200,000 bond.
As part of his bond agreement, McGonigal agreed not to leave the continental US and to turn over his travel documents. Shestakov was barred from leaving Connecticut or the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and agreed to electronic monitoring until he can hand in his passport next week.
Sanctions game
McGonigal, 54, was also charged in a separate indictment out of Washington with concealing payments of $225,000 in cash from a former member of Albania’s intelligence service. He was scheduled to appear remotely in that case Wednesday.
Under federal law, McGonigal was required to report to the FBI contacts with foreign officials, but prosecutors allege that he hid that from his employer as he pursued business and foreign travel that created a conflict of interest with his law-enforcement duties.
McGonigal, who also served as the cyber-counterintelligence section chief in Washington, was one of the first FBI agents to learn that a Trump campaign official claimed that the Russians had “dirt” on thenDemocratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, which triggered the investigation that continued into Donald Trump’s presidency.
The 21-page New York indictment against McGonigal states that while employed by the bureau, he received then-classified information that Deripaska would be included on the list of Russian oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin sanctioned by the US after Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014.
Deripaska, the founder of aluminum giant Rusal, was added to the sanctions list in April 2018, with the Treasury Department noting he “has been investigated for money laundering, and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official and taking part in extortion and racketeering. There are also allegations that Deripaska bribed a government official, ordered the murder of a
businessman and had links to a Russian organized crime group.”
Making connections
Around the same time, the indictment says, Shestakov connected McGonigal to a former Soviet diplomat who functioned as an agent for Deripaska. That person is not identified in court papers, but the Justice Department says he was “rumored in public media reports to be a Russian intelligence officer.”
According to prosecutors, Shestakov asked McGonigal for help getting the daughter of Deripaska’s agent an internship with the NYPD. McGonigal agreed, prosecutors say, and told an
NYPD contact that, “I have interest in her father for a number of reasons.” Meanwhile, the indictment says McGonigal told one of his subordinates that he wanted to “recruit” the Deripaska agent. The agent’s daughter, the indictment says, was given “VIP treatment from the NYPD” and claimed to a police sergeant that an unknown FBI agent had “given her access to confidential FBI files.”
In 2019, after he left the FBI, McGonigal was hired as a “consultant and investigator” by a law firm Deripaska’s agent wanted to retain to get the sanctions against his patron removed. During negotiations, McGonigal met with Deripaska and other cronies at Deripaska’s homes in London and Vienna. McGonigal and Shestakov didn’t refer to Deripaska by name but as “the individual,” “our friend from Vienna” and “the Vienna client,” court documents say.
In exchange for his efforts, McGonigal asked that the law firm send $25,000 to a company owned by Shestakov.
Efforts to “de-list” Deripaska were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but by the spring of 2021, McGonigal and Shestakov allegedly were in negotiations to work for Deripaska on a “non-legal matter not lawful under the [Treasury] sanctions.” In messages between the two men and Deripaska’s agent, the oligarch was again referred to by code names, including “the big guy” and “the client.”
‘Wire’ the money
Ultimately, McGonigal, Shestakov and Deripaska’s agent signed off on a deal in August 2021 that would see the men paid by a Russian bank headquartered in Cyprus in the form of money wired to a New Jersey company owned by a friend of McGonigal — who had received a corporate email account and a cellphone, which the FBI official used under a fake name while still employed by the bureau. According to the indictment, $51,280 was wired on Aug. 13, 2021, to the New Jersey company, an amount that was to be followed by monthly payments of $41,790 between Aug. 18 and Nov. 18, 2021.
McGonigal is charged with four counts — conspiring to violate and evade US sanctions, money laundering, conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals. He faces a maximum of 80 years in prison. Shestakov is charged with the same offenses as well as an additional count of making false statements to investigators, which carries an additional maximum of five years behind bars.