Sanctioned Russian oligarch launders money through former FBI counterintelligence chief
On August 15, 2023, Charles McGonigal, the former head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York, pleaded guilty to accepting illicit payments from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was under US sanctions and described in a Senate report as a “key implementer of Russian influence operations around the globe.” In 2018, the same year McGonigal retired from the FBI, he was hired by a law firm to help get sanctions lifted from Deripaska. McGonigal later accepted $17,500 from Deripaska to conduct opposition research on one of the oligarch’s rivals, Vladimir Potanin, with hopes of getting Potanin added to US blacklists. McGonigal pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.