Russian ex-diplomat pleads guilty to lying to FBI

MANHATTAN (CN) — An ex-diplomat who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. court system pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying to the FBI about business dealings, avoiding a newly narrowed trial that was set to start next week.

Sergey Shestakov entered a plea in Manhattan federal court, where he and ex-FBI agent Charles McGonigal were accused of violating U.S. sanctions by working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska after previously seeking to lift those same sanctions. They faced charges of violating and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, conspiring to commit money laundering and money laundering.

Shestakov was also charged with lying to the FBI and was scheduled to begin trial Monday.

Earlier this week, however, prosecutors said they would drop all but the final charge — making false statements — according to Shestakov’s attorney, Rita Glavin. The government then offered a plea deal in which Shestakov admitted he’d intended to mislead an FBI agent in August 2021 by saying he wasn’t sure of McGonigal’s relationship with Evgeny Fokin, the head of international cooperation at EN+, a Moscow-based aluminum and energy company.

“My answer knowingly and willfully concealed certain facts,” Shestakov said Thursday, “in both my demeanor and my words.”

Before accepting the 71-year-old’s plea, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, a Clinton appointee, cautioned that he doesn’t give much weight to sentencing guidelines, which recommend up to six months. The charge itself carries a maximum sentence of five years.

“I pay little to no attention to the guidelines. I regard the guidelines as fundamentally irrational to their core, and totally irrational in many of their applications,” the judge said.

He later added, “I may sentence you to five years, for all you know.”

Rakoff also told Shestakov he would hand down the same sentence on the plea agreement as he would if Shestakov were convicted by a jury.

“I never penalize anyone in any way, shape or form for going to trial,” Rakoff said. “I do that because I don’t think it is constitutionally proper to penalize anyone for going to trial.”

The judge confirmed with Southern District of New York prosecutors that the decision to drop Shestakov’s other charges wasn’t a directive from Main Justice.

“I wanted to make sure we didn’t have an Adams situation here,” Rakoff said.

McGonigal received a four-year prison sentence in 2023, following his own guilty plea to a New York federal indictment and an additional two-year sentence in 2024 for a separate plea to an indictment in Washington.

“[A]s public servants, they should have known better,” then-U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement announcing the charges in 2023.

The New York indictment described the pair as taking secret payments from Deripaska for investigating a rival Russian oligarch, and using shell companies and forged signatures to carry out the deal.

Shestakov admitted Thursday that he’d signed someone else’s name, at McGonigal’s direction, on a contract involving Folkin. He said he’d trusted McGonigal’s assertion he had permission to do so, particularly considering his co-defendant’s FBI background.

“I had no reason not to believe him,” Shestakov said.

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