Charles McGonigal charged with breaking US sanctions against Russia oligarch Oleg Deripaska, money laundering
A former senior FBI counterintelligence official who spearheaded the Trump-Russia probe was arrested and charged over his own alleged ties to a sanctioned Russian oligarch amid the war in Ukraine.
Charles McGonigal, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York who retired in 2018, is charged with violating U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. He was charged alongside Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who later became a U.S. citizen and a Russian interpreter for courts and government offices, through a five-count indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court Monday.
McGonigal and Shestakov both were arrested Saturday. The indictment is a rare move by federal prosecutors to bring charges against a former senior FBI official before a federal grand jury.
Though not referenced in or related to the indictment, McGonigal, while serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., was one of the first bureau officials to learn of allegations that George Papadopoulos, a campaign adviser for former President Donald Trump, boasted that he knew Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, launching the investigation into alleged Russian election interference known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane, Business Insider previously reported.
Arrest Hillary / Obama / Kerry / Pelosi too !!!