Reported by: Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum

A former senior F.B.I. official who oversaw some of its most secret and sensitivecounterintelligence investigations in New York was accused on Monday of taking money from a former Albanian intelligence employee and from a representative of 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.

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 Oleg V. Deripaska, the oligarch whom the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan on Monday charged him with aiding.

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 — try to get off the sanctions list and also investigate a rival oligarch. The charges are a serious and rare accusation against an senior F.B.I. official, and they demonstrate that the reach of Russia’s oligarchs can extend into the heart of American law enforcement.

“This is an unprecedented case, which rightly or wrongly will fuel political criticism and concern about the F.B.I.,” said Jonathan C. Poling, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department’s national security division. “The charges demonstrate D.O.J. clearly intends to send a strong message, including to former officials that worked in national security fields.”

The indictment unsealed in Washington charged that Mr. McGonigal, while working for the bureau, took $225,000 in secret cash payments from a person who decades earlier had served with Albanian intelligence. Mr. McGonigal concealed that relationship from the F.B.I., the indictment said.

Read full report: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/nyregion/fbi-money-laundering-charles-mcgonigal.html