Originally Syndicated on May 16, 2023 @ 10:44 am
Former FBI official Charles McGonigal has been arrested on suspicion of working for sanctioned Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska.
Oleg Deripaska and His Connection to the FBI
The FBI agent who was working on the case against Russian oligarchs met a Deripaska employee while at the bureau and later began advocating directly for her in his efforts to have sanctions repealed.
The indictment against Charles McGonigal, age 54, has been posted to the US Department of Justice website. The department claims that Deripaska hired him to investigate a certain Russian billionaire (whom they did not identify by name).
On January 23 in New York, the former US agent was detained on charges of breaking US sanctions, conspiracy, and money laundering related to his work for her. ABC News reports that McGonigal is among the highest-ranking former FBI agents ever to be criminally accused.
The conclusion states that McGonigal served as an FBI agent from 1996 to 2018 and that in the final two years before his retirement, he oversaw the counterintelligence division of the FBI in New York and took part in “investigations against Russian oligarchs,” including Deripaska.
Sergei Shestakov, a 69-year-old former Soviet and Russian diplomat, is another named defendant. The Ministry of Justice claims that Shestakov served as a translator for US government agencies and courts after gaining American citizenship and working as a diplomat for the USSR and Russian foreign ministries between 1979 and 1993. According to The Washington Post, Shestakov faces up to 85 years in prison on perjury charges, and the former spy could receive 80 years. McGonigal entered a plea of not guilty.
The phrase “You know who”
According to the findings, McGonigal and Shestakov attempted to remove Deripaska from the sanctions list in 2019, and in 2021, they began investigating another big Russian businessman (referred to in court filings as “Oligarch-2”). Deripaska is accused of asking McGonigal and Shestakov to “focus on Oligarch-2’s interest in a large Russian corporation,” where she and another oligarch struggled for “control,” according to the prosecution.
McGonigal and Shestakov were tasked with investigating Oligarch-2 for any foreign passports and assets outside of Russia. Businessmen are very interested in “Oligarch-2” and his enterprise, but the American government has been silent on both fronts.
Unravelling the FBI Agent’s Dark Secret
FBI Deputy Director Michael Driscoll stated that both suspects “fraudulently used an American organization to cover up their activities in violation of US law.” Before the search operations began in November 2021, McGonigal was able to get information from him concerning assets worth $500 million.
Vladimir Potanin, the company’s largest shareholder and a longtime Deripaska ally, and Rusal were at odds over who should run it. Although the two parties settled the dispute ten years ago, news broke at the end of 2018 that Rusal had filed a fresh case against Potanin in London’s High Court.
Forbes reported in August 2021 that the two companies, Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s AFK Sistema and Oleg Deripaska ‘s En+, were in talks to divide up their ownership of Natura Siberica. However, the businessman’s lawyer insisted that Deripaska was innocent of any involvement in the problem at Natura Siberica.
According to the indictment, McGonigal worked for Deripaska and received payment from him via an offshore law company after he left the FBI. We’re talking about a range of amounts here, from $25,000 to $51,000 to another $41,000 spread out over three instalments in August, September, and November of 2021.
Concurrently, the ex-FBI agent tried to keep his relationship with Deripaska a secret, telling associates he was working for a “rich Russian guy” and stressing that his activities were all above board, as the paper describes. When speaking with Shestakov, McGonigal frequently referred to Deripaska as “a big man” and “you know who.
McGonigal oversaw the FBI’s autopsy investigation into American spies killed in China and examined former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. A case was started against McGonigal in Washington, DC, on suspicion of receiving $225,000 in cash from an Albanian person who worked for a Chinese energy company, but the US authorities did not prosecute him for espionage.
In April 2018, Deripaska and his firms, IC Rusal, En +, and Eurosibenergo, were placed under sanctions. As of December, the corporations have successfully negotiated with US officials to have the sanctions lifted. The primary stipulation was that Deripaska’s ownership of En+ is reduced from its current level of around 70% to below 45%. The industrialist and the GAZ group, which he owns through Russian Machines, remained on the watch list, though.
Before October 2022, the millionaire lost both the main case and the appeal he filed against the sanctions before a US court. Deripaska sued the United States, claiming that he was wrongfully targeted as a result of partisan bickering about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Deripaska claims that he lost $7.5 billion, or nearly 81% of his fortune, as a result of the sanctions imposed against him, which were unfair and unconstitutional.
This Deripaska-related issue in the United States is hardly the first. His name keeps coming up in Russia-related inquiries. Deripaska’s longtime association with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was uncovered in one of the investigations that followed the 2016 US presidential election. The Federal Bureau of Investigation noticed this. Both Deripaska and Manafort have stated that the financial advisor’s compensation came from Deripaska. Deripaska sued Manafort for misappropriating roughly $19 million in investment funds in 2014.
