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A former high-ranking FBI agent who worked as a covert investigator for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska has been sentenced in New York to more than four years in prison, after pleading guilty in August to violating US sanctions and money laundering laws.
Charles McGonigal, who previously served as special agent in charge of counter-intelligence at the FBI’s New York office and who had investigated Deripaska during his time in the agency, was arrested in January, and charged with helping the oligarch investigate a rival.
“McGonigal abused the skills and influence his country entrusted him with by secretly working for the very threats he had previously protected it against,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing submission to the judge.
Even while he supervised investigations and arrests for national security crimes as an agent, he was “taking advantage of his position to build a Rolodex of rogues to whom he could offer his services after retiring”, they added.
In his written statement to the court, McGonigal said he recognised that his actions “overrode my good judgment and values” and that they were “immoral and illegal”.
The judge handed down a 50-month sentence at a hearing on Thursday.
Deripaska, who made his fortune in metals, was first sanctioned by the US in 2018, in response to Russia’s earlier annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
He is one of the few oligarchs to have spoken out against Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which he has called “madness” and a “colossal mistake” even while avoiding direct criticism of the Russian president. But his clashes with the Kremlin over the war have done little to mend his longstanding and hostile relationship with western authorities.
“Economic sanctions are a critical component of our national security policy. They must be fully and fairly applied to effectively limit the resources of those who threaten to harm the United States and our global allies,” FBI assistant director-in-charge James Smith said at the time of McGonigal’s guilty plea.
Prosecutors had alleged that McGonigal, who retired from the FBI in 2018 after 22 years at the agency, agreed in 2021 to “investigate a rival Russian oligarch in return for concealed payments from Deripaska”. He worked for the oligarch both via a law firm and directly, they said, and was paid tens of thousands of dollars for his services.
US authorities charged Deripaska and his associates in September 2022 with violating sanctions, while Ekaterina Voronina, Deripaska’s girlfriend, was charged with making false statements to US authorities as she attempted to enter the country to give birth to the couple’s child.
In April, Deripaska defeated an attempt by a former business associate to have him fined or jailed for contempt of court in London’s High Court.
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