On Friday, former FBI official Charles McGonigal pleaded guilty to accepting $225,000 from Albanian-American Agron Nezaj, a former Albanian intelligence officer who helped him build relationships in Albania for future business opportunities.
On March 8, 2023, Charles McGonigal, who had previously served as the special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence branch in New York, shows up at the Manhattan federal courthouse in Manhattan, New York. On September 22nd, McGonigal entered a guilty plea to the charge of concealing of significant facts. (Source: USA VOA News/AP News)
No Trial for the Former FBI Official
Court filings show that Nezaj cooperated with the FBI’s Albania investigation into former FBI McGonigal’s contacts. McGonigal was indicted on nine counts in Washington for failing to declare monetary transfers, foreign official contacts, and 2017 and 2018 visits to Europe with Nezaj that neither he nor the FBI paid for. The guilty plea was entered in Washington’s U.S. District Court after prosecutors and McGonigal’s lawyers settled. Prosecutors reduced eight counts when he pleaded guilty to hiding significant evidence.
There will be no trial after the deal. The court heard McGonigal’s apology. Before leaving the FBI in September 2018, I planned to start a security consulting firm with a friend. He told U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that his government contacts and foreign affiliations would help him launch the business. I did not disclose a $225,000 loan from my friend and possible U.S. business partner for many meetings with foreign nationals. I attended these meetings to build consultancy business contacts. McGonigal said the money was for business startups.
Those contacts included many 2017 and 2018 meetings with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, attended by Nezaj and a prime ministerial aide with economic interests. McGonigal investigated an Albanian opposition party lobbyist in New York for criminal charges. The Albanian prime minister’s office provided this information, according to the indictment. The American lobbyist and Albanian party are not named in the indictment.
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Former FBI Official McGonigal Cannot Appeal
However, ex-Trump assistant Nick Muzin filed a lobbying report with the Department of Justice on November 14, 2017, on behalf of the Albanian Democratic Party, the largest opposition party. While lobbying for a foreign political force is legal for a registered lobbyist, Muzin filed months after an incomplete filing. His payment was investigated in Albania for its suspicious origin. McGonigal told the court he was in touch with the prime minister. Rama denies wrongdoing. After the court, McGonigal’s lawyer, Seth DuCharme, said his client accepts full responsibility and looks forward to moving on. “While he may have had or did have, I think, some pretty legitimate interests that aligned with the United States in keeping up those relationships, he also clearly had a personal interest,” DuCharme said. McGonigal retired as FBI New York counterintelligence division chief in 2018.
After leaving the FBI, McGonigal admitted to working for Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska and entered a guilty plea to conspiracy in New York in August. McGonigal had studied Deripaska, who recruited him to look into his wealthy rival’s violation of US sanctions on Russia. When he is sentenced in mid-December, he might get a five-year prison term. The maximum punishment for the charge in District of Columbia court is five years in jail; but, as part of the plea deal, prosecutors are expected to ask for a lesser term. According to the judge, McGonigal cannot appeal his February sentencing.
