Former senior FBI official Charles McGonigal, 55, was sentenced on Friday, February 16, 2024, to 28 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for taking $225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence worker while still at the FBI.
He previously pleaded guilty to aiding a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, whom he investigated and admitted to his undisclosed receipt of $225,000 in cash from an individual with ties to the Albanian government while he was FBI Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office supervising counterintelligence investigations.
McGonigal pleaded guilty on Sept. 22, 2023, to one count of concealing material facts.
In imposing the maximum sentence permitted by a plea bargain, the court found that McGonigal’s conduct involved substantial interference with the administration of justice.
Under a plea deal accepted by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, federal prosecutors agreed to drop all other pending charges: two counts of falsifying records or documents, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and six additional counts of concealing material facts or making false statements.
According to papers filed with the court, McGonigal was responsible for overseeing counterintelligence and national security matters when he served as Special Agent in Charge of the FBI New York Field Office from August 2017 through his retirement from the FBI in September 2018.
During this time, McGonigal concealed from the FBI the nature of his relationship with a former foreign security officer and businessperson who had ongoing business interests in foreign countries and before foreign governments.
Specifically, McGonigal hid from the FBI that he received at least $225,000 in cash from the individual and traveled abroad with him and met with foreign nationals, in part to advance their private business interests.
The FBI arrested McGonigal on Jan. 21, 2023, at J.F.K. International Airport in New York. He was simultaneously indicted on charges by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the District of Columbia and the Southern District of New York.
In December 2023, McGonigal was sentenced to 50 months in prison and ordered to pay a $40,000 fine for conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and to commit money laundering in an unrelated case being prosecuted in the Southern District of New York.
In 2002, he was appointed a supervisory special agent in the Counter-Espionage Section at FBI Headquarters.
In 2006, he became field supervisor of a counter-espionage squad at the Washington Field Office and was one of the original case agents assigned to the Russian sleeper agents Illegals Program
McGonigal led the 2010 investigation into the United States diplomatic cables leak of over 200,000 State Department documents, and the investigation into Chelsea Manning’s collaboration with WikiLeaks.
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