US sentences former FBI agent for violating Russia sanctions

On Thursday, a former top FBI official was sentenced to more than four years in prison for working for a sanctioned Russian billionaire.

Charles McGonigal, 55, was sentenced to 50 months in prison and a $40,000 fine for conspiring to breach sanctions regulations and commit money laundering while working for Oleg Deripaska.

He pled guilty in August after being charged in January.

According to a Justice Department statement, McGonigal, a former special agent in the New York Counterintelligence Division, helped in the investigation of Deripaska and other oligarchs and handled investigations into sanctions breaches during his stint at the FBI.

“Yet at the same time, he began building a relationship with an agent of Deripaska, in the hopes of doing business with Deripaska after he retired from the FBI,” it said.

Part of the work that McGonigal carried out for Deripaska included investigating a rival Russian oligarch, “in return for concealed payments.”

“While negotiating and performing services for Deripaska, McGonigal and the agent attempted to conceal Deripaska’s involvement,” including by using shell companies and forged signatures, the Justice Department said.

“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,” said US Attorney Damian Williams.

“Once he left public service, he jeopardized our national security,” he added, calling Deripaska “Vladimir Putin’s agent.”

The United States slapped sanctions on Deripaska in 2018 over his close ties to Russia’s government and its seizure four years before of the Crimea region from Ukraine.

McGonigal had retired that same year.