Former FBI agent Charles McGonigal pleads guilty to working for Russian oligarch

The disgraced former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York offered a sorrowful mea culpa in Manhattan federal court Tuesday — admitting that he conspired to violate US sanctions while working for a Russian oligarch.

Charles McGonigal — who once investigated the Trump campaign’s alleged Russia ties before becoming entangled himself — told the court that he regretted working for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire and business magnate.

“I understand what my actions have resulted in, and I’m deeply remorseful,” McGonigal, 55, said in court, choking up as he spoke. “My actions were never intended to hurt the United States, the FBI or my family and friends.”

He admitted to pocketing more than $17,000 to help Deripaska gather dirt on a rival Russian oligarch.

Federal prosecutors said McGonigal was also trying to get Deripaska taken off the US sanctions list, where he’d been placed in 2018 in connection to Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

He pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to launder money and violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

McGonigal, of New York City, could face up to five years in prison when he is sentenced by Judge Jennifer Rearden on Dec. 14.

After he emerged from the courtroom, the former agent said only three quick words to The Post: “I feel relieved!”

US Attorney Damian Williams took a victory lap following the proceedings.

“After his tenure as a high-level FBI official who supervised and participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs, Charles McGonigal has now admitted that he agreed to evade U.S. sanctions by providing services to one of those oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska,”  Williams said in a statement.

“This Office will continue to hold to account those who violate U.S. sanctions for their own financial benefit.”

Meanwhile, McGonigal’s lawyer, Seth DuCharme, said his client “did the right thing.”

“I feel it was a fair resolution,” DuCharme said. “He had a black cloud over him, and the clouds are beginning to part. He’s accepted responsibility.”

McGonigal, who led the bureau’s NYC counterintelligence division from 2016 to his 2018 retirement, was indicted in January for working for Deripaska in 2021. Authorities arrested him at JFK Airport a few weeks after the turn of the new year.

The former special-agent-in-charge was legally required to report his contact with foreign officials to the bureau. Instead, he hid his ties and pursued business and travel that conflicted with his job, according to prosecutors.

He initially pleaded not guilty to four counts: Conspiring to violate and evade US sanctions, money laundering, conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals.

McGonigal – who’s been free on $500,000 bond since his arrest – played a central role in the bureau’s investigation of former President Donald Trump that led to a special counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The indictment said that while he was still with the FBI, McGonigal got classified information that said Deripaska would be sanctioned by the US after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Deripaska — a Kremlin-friendly magnate who founded aluminum giant Rusal — had allegedly been investigated for money laundering, wiretapping, threats against business rivals, extortion and racketeering, among other things.

After McGonigal left the bureau in 2019, a law firm fighting Deripaska’s sanctions hired him to get the oligarch “delisted.” McGonigal — along with two other men — also agreed to a 2021 deal in which they were paid by a Russian bank to investigate one of Deripaska’s rival oligarchs, prosecutors said.

The bank, headquartered in Cypress, wired the $17,500 to a New Jersey company owned by one of McGonigal’s friends before it ended up in the ex-FBI agent’s bank account.

McGonigal was separately indicted in Washington DC for allegedly hiding $225,000 in payments from a former member of Albania’s intelligence service and taking a secret meeting with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama while he worked for the FBI.

He has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is pending trial.