
Charles McGonigal, ex-FBI counterintelligence official, to be sentenced for working with Russian oligarch
CBSN
Washington — Charles McGonigal, the former top counterintelligence official at the FBI's New York office, is set to be sentenced Thursday afternoon for accepting secret payments from a sanctioned Russian oligarch and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
McGonigal pleaded guilty to a federal charge in New York in August to conspiring to violate a law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He admitted to helping Oleg Deripaska dig up dirt on a rival Russian oligarch and laundering money by concealing the source of the payments for that work. He has also been charged and pleaded guilty in a separate case in Washington.
The Justice Department is seeking a five-year sentence and $200,000 fine for the charge in the New York case, saying McGonigal "betrayed his country and manipulated a sanctions regime vital to its national security." Such a sentence would be a warning to other former national security officials who may consider "abusing their positions in the service of hostile foreign actors," the government wrote in a sentencing submission last week.