Former Senior F.B.I. Official in New York Charged With Aiding Oligarch

Prosecutors say Charles McGonigal, who was chief of counterintelligence, worked secretly for Oleg Deripaska to investigate a Russian rival.

A former senior F.B.I. official in New York who oversaw some of the agency’s most secret and sensitive counterintelligence investigations was accused on Monday of taking money from a former Albanian intelligence employee and from a representative of Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch.

The charges against the former official, Charles F. McGonigal, came in separate indictments unsealed in New York and Washington, D.C., after an investigation by his own agency and federal prosecutors. In the New York case, he was charged with violating economic sanctions that the United States has imposed on Russia because of its aggression in Ukraine.

Before he retired in 2018, Mr. McGonigal had been the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division in New York. In that post, he supervised investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Mr. Deripaska, whom the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan charged him with aiding. Mr. Deripaska is an aluminum magnate with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin.

Federal prosecutors said Mr. McGonigal, 54, broke U.S. law by agreeing to help Mr. Deripaska, who was indicted himself last year on sanctions charges, investigate a rival oligarch and try to get off the sanctions list.

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