MANHATTAN (CN) — A former head of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York was sentenced to 50 months in prison on Thursday afternoon after pleading guilty to charges related to his paid work for a sanctioned Russian oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Charles McGonigal pleaded guilty in August to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, in connection to an indictment that accused him of leveraging his tenure and government contacts as FBI special-agent-in-charge to aid billionaire Russian metals magnate Oleg Deripaska evade international sanctions.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rearden noted the seriousness of McGonigal “repeatedly” flouting international sanctions “compels a meaningful custodial sentence," but also credited his good work done with the Federal Bureau of Investigations with bringing his 50-month sentence down from the statutory maximum requested by prosecutors.
McGonigal, who spent over two decades working for the FBI, asked in a sentencing submission for the Biden-appointed judge to impose a sentence of no prison time on his guilty plea.
One of the highest-ranking FBI agents to ever be indicted on criminal charges, McGonigal admitted in his guilty plea that he received $17,500 in concealed payments from a shell company's New Jersey bank account in 2021 to perform opposition research on Deripaska's rival, Vladimir Potanin.
McGonigal spoke for three minutes Thursday, during which he teared up while asking for leniency and declaring acceptance of full responsibility for his conduct and actions.
“I, more than anyone, know that I have committed a felony,” he said, seated at the defense table between his attorneys. “As a former FBI special agent, it causes me extreme mental, emotional, and physical pain, not to mention the shame I feel for embarrassing myself and the FBI, the organization I love and respect.”
Bracewell firm attorney Seth DuCharme asked the judge to consider the harm done to McGonigal’s reputation, his loss of two jobs, and strains on his personal life and family relationships because of the crime.
The remaining counts of McGonigal’s superseding indictment in New York were dismissed upon his sentencing on the one count of conspiracy.
Federal prosecutors sought a sentence of the maximum term of 60 months’ imprisonment.
“Given the seriousness of McGonigal’s crimes, the maximum available sentence is also necessary ‘to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment for the offense’,” the Department of Justice wrote in a sentencing memo.
“McGonigal did not simply violate sanctions emplaced to protect U.S. national security. He did so after having previously held a position of trust in enforcing those sanctions. And he did so using the special investigative skills he developed with the FBI to prevent violations of our national security laws—not to participate in them.”
Federal prosecutors urged the judge to give McGonigal’s experience at the FBI weight as a mitigating factor for his sentence.
“McGonigal was a senior official in America’s justice system,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten wrote in the filing. “He then turned the skills and influence he gained there against America’s laws. The justice system should not now be seen to treat one of its own with particular leniency.”
McGonigal, who retired from the bureau in 2018, was indicted both in Washington and New York this past January, sending shockwaves throughout the intelligence community as he became one of the most senior FBI officials to be charged with a crime.
The indictments were especially noteworthy considering his lead role in major intelligence investigations into the 2010 release of classified State Department cables by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and a hunt for a suspected Chinese spy working as a mole inside the CIA.
The cases were brought by the Department of Justice’s Public Corruption Unit.
Pursuant to the plea agreement, McGonigal copped to a superseding information containing a lone charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering and violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act from the spring of 2021 through November 2021.
In his guilty plea allocution, he described the work as collecting "open-source derogatory information" on Potanin in an effort to get him on the United States sanctions list.
Potanin, the billionaire owner of a nickel giant, was dubbed "Russia's richest man" in 2021.
Prosecutors said evidence would show that McGonigal negotiated a fee between $650,000 and $3 million for looking for dirt on Deripaska's individual rivals and rival corporations.
The oligarch's payments were transferred from the Russian bank Gazprombank through an intermediary in Cyprus to the New Jersey bank account that ultimately paid the retired special agent, McGonigal explained.
McGonigal also pleaded guilty in D.C. federal court last September to one count for concealing material facts. His sentencing hearing there is set for Feb. 16, 2024.
McGonigal’s attorney asked to delay his voluntary surrender until after sentencing in the D.C. case.
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