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(NEW YORK) — A former top FBI official in New York has been arrested over his ties to a Russian oligarch, law enforcement sources told ABC News Monday.
Charles McGonigal, who was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York Field Office, is under arrest over his ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the United States and criminally charged last year with violating those sanctions.
McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018. He was arrested Saturday afternoon after he arrived at JFK Airport following travel in Sri Lanka, the sources said.
McGonigal is charged with violating U.S. sanctions by trying to get Deripaska off the sanctions list.
Deripaska, an aluminum magnate, was among two dozen Russians sanctioned in 2018 by the Treasury Department as punishment for “the Russian government’s ongoing and increasingly malign activities in the world,” according to Treasury officials. The FBI searched his homes in New York and Washington in 2021.
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