Retired top FBI agent in NYC is charged with violating sanctions on Russia, working with oligarch

The former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York City was accused Monday of secretly working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch and pocketing payments from a former foreign security officer during his time in the bureau.

The charges against Charles McGonigal, announced in parallel indictments by the U.S. attorneys’ offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., came as an embarrassing disclosure for the FBI, embroiling a former lawman who was once among the agency’s most senior officials.

McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018 after a two-decade career that included Russian foreign counterintelligence work and investigating oligarchs. He was arrested Saturday after landing at Kennedy Airport, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

McGonigal and court interpreter and former Soviet diplomat Sergey Shestakov worked in 2021 for Putin associate and aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, probing one of his Russian rivals in exchange for secret payments, court records charge.

Through their work, McGonigal, 54, and Shestakov, 69, violated U.S. sanctions imposed on Deripaska in 2018, according to the unsealed multi-count indictment filed in Manhattan Federal Court.

McGonigal knew that the work violated the sanctions, and had attempted to have the measures lifted after leaving the FBI, the charging papers said.

In a statement, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said that McGonigal and Shestakov “should have known better.”

McGonigal pleaded not guilty before Manhattan U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave on Monday afternoon and was released on a $500,000 bond. Cave imposed travel restrictions, and McGonigal was forced to surrender his passport.

A sullen-faced McGonigal left court holding his wife’s hand without taking questions from reporters. His lawyer, Seth DuCharme, said he had not seen “any evidence yet.”

“Charlie’s had a long, distinguished career with the FBI,” said DuCharme, the former head of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office. “He served the United States for decades. This is obviously a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his family.”

“We’ll review the evidence,” DuCharme added. “We’ll closely scrutinize it. And we have a lot of confidence in Mr. McGonigal.”

Shestakov also pleaded not guilty and was released on $200,000 bond. He was arrested Saturday at his home in Connecticut.

Shestakov’s attorney, Bennett Epstein, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McGonigal and Shestakov were charged with money laundering and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law the U.S. uses to sanction foreign countries. Each of four counts facing the two men carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison.

Shestakov was also charged with one count of making false statements, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

“The FBI is committed to the enforcement of economic sanctions designed to protect the United States and our allies, especially against hostile activities of a foreign government,” Michael Driscoll, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement.

“There are no exceptions for anyone,” Driscoll added, “including a former FBI official.”

Citing Russian aggression in Ukraine, the U.S. Treasury Department placed Deripaska, 55, on a list of sanctioned individuals in 2018.

At the time, the U.S. presented Deripaska, a metals baron, as a malignant actor apparently operating on behalf of the Russian government and under a cloud of alarming accusations. Deripaska was said to have ordered the execution of a businessman, and to have engaged in extortion and racketeering.

McGonigal and Shestakov attempted to cover their tracks by avoiding using Deripaska’s name in digital messages and using shell companies to send and receive payments from the oligarch, among other methods, according to the feds.

Manhattan prosecutors charged Deripaska and three associates with multiple federal offenses in September for circumventing U.S. sanctions, including by conspiring to have his pregnant girlfriend travel to the U.S. on a tourist visa to birth his child on American soil.

Over a 22-year career at the FBI, McGonigal investigated the 9/11 terror acts, led high-wattage espionage probes in Washington and served as the chief of the cyber-counterintelligence coordination section at the FBI’s national headquarters.

In late 2016, he was named special agent in charge of the counterintelligence division at the FBI’s New York field office.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said McGonigal’s crimes began before he left the FBI in 2018.

Beginning in August 2017, McGonigal concealed from the bureau a relationship he had with a one-time Albanian security officer who later served as an FBI source, according to a nine-count indictment filed in Washington.

McGonigal allegedly received more than $225,000 from the individual, who was not named in court papers but was identified as a New Jersey resident. That case did not implicate Shestakov.

Court papers described McGonigal receiving payments in the fall of 2017, including an $80,000 handoff in a parked car outside a New York City restaurant, and other exchanges at the unnamed individual’s New Jersey residence.

A court date in Washington was set for Wednesday, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said. In Washington, McGonigal faces six counts of making false statements, two counts of falsifying records and one count of concealing material facts.

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, said in a statement that his agency will “go to great lengths to investigate and hold accountable anyone who violates the law.”

“The way we maintain the trust and confidence of the American people,” he said, “is through our work — showing, when all the facts come out, that we stuck to the process and we treated everyone equally, even when it is one of our own.”