Charles McGonigal — the previous FBI official who has been arrested and indicted by US authorities over his ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska – has quietly spent the past yr working for one more Russian-born billionaire, The Post has learned.
Aman Resorts, a five-star hotel chain owned by Vladislav Doronin – a martial-arts-trained property magnate who has been branded “Russia’s answer to Donald Trump” – hired McGonigal within the spring of 2022 for a high-dollar job as director of security for Aman’s 34 locations world wide, in keeping with sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
Indeed, sources speculated that when McGonigal was arrested at JFK Airport on Saturday he was coming back from a business trip in Sri Lanka, where Aman operates a pair of swanky hotels.
Sources said McGonigal worked for Aman out of Latest York City, where the corporate opened its first property in August on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in the previous Crown constructing, quickly earning the status as the most costly property within the Big Apple with room rates starting at $2,400 per night.
Vladislav Doronin along with his partner former model Kristina Romanova.Getty Images for amfAR
Former top FBI agent, Charles McGonigal, was indicted for working with a Russian oligarch and accepting payments from him.Stefan Jeremiah for NY Post
An Aman spokesperson confirmed the corporate hired McGonigal last yr, but maintained that his tenure began just just a few months ago.
“Mr. McGonigal was hired by Aman Group in the autumn of 2022 as global head of security, based on his qualifications and similar role in the actual estate industry, in addition to his 20 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the Aman rep said.
The corporate also said McGonigal isn’t any longer working for Aman Group, nevertheless it it didn’t disclose when he left.
A former Aman worker who left the hotel group said that the office culture was more Russian than American and might be “demanding” and “uncomfortable.”
The corporate said: “Aman Group was founded 35 years ago and has built its own distinctive culture enriched by its global presence in over 20 countries, reflecting the contributions from and collaboration with a various, international staff of 6,500 employees worldwide.”
McGonigal left the courthouse along with his wife this week as he plead not guilty to the fees against him.Stefan Jeremiah for NY Post
In September, Business Insider reported that federal prosecutors were McGonigal’s involvement with Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who was sanctioned by the US and had allegedly turned to McGonigal to get the sanctions removed.
“Based on his background, we thought it was very strange that he was brought in” – and that McGonigal stayed after reports surfaced that he was under investigation, one former Aman worker said.
“The method was very obscure,” one other source added. A company director of security at Aman “had been in place,” but was reassigned and “no apparent reasons got,” in keeping with the source. “It was then when Charlie showed up.”
Doronin and Romanova have two children together.Dave Benett/Getty Images for amf
Following McGonigal’s 2018 retirement from the FBI – where he was head of counterintelligence on the agency’s Latest York office and had led the Trump “Russiagate” probe into whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election – McGonigal was hired as a senior vice chairman for global security at real-estate giant Brookfield Properties.
He left that position in January 2022, Brookfield said. McGonigal – whose hiring at Aman raised eyebrows amongst hotel staffers, in keeping with the sources – told Aman employees that he left Brookfield for “personal reasons,” a source near the situation told The Post.
Former CIA, FBI and NSA officials are routinely hired by large corporations which can be targets of espionage and cyber threats, said Anthony Roman, president of risk management firm, Roman & Associates.
“It’s a simple and regular stop for these officials,” Roman said.
Oligarch Oleg Deripaska was sanctioned by the US government in 2018.AFP via Getty Images
McGonigal’s attorney Seth DuCharme didn’t respond for comment. The Department of Justice also didn’t respond.
On Monday, 54-year-old McGonigal was indicted for money laundering and violating US sanctions law. The Justice Department alleges that McGonigal together with a former Russian diplomat turned interpreter for the federal courts – Sergy Shestakov – worked for Deripaska, an aluminum magnate that had been sanctioned by the US in 2018.
During his tenure on the FBI, McGonigal supervised investigations of oligarchs, including Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the US for allegedly acting on behalf of the Russian government within the energy sector. The federal government alleges that Deripaska hired the pair to get him off of the sanctions list and to research one among his rival oligarchs, paying them through shell corporations.
The Aman hotel opened on Fifth Avenue and 57th St. in August and have become often known as the most costly hotel in NYC.
McGonigal pleaded not guilty and was released on a $500,000 bond.
Doronin’s ties to McGonigal will certainly raise more questions as prosecutors scrutinize his relationship with Russia, experts say.
“With Doronin, it’s not similar to Deripaska, who’s under sanctions,” said Louise Shelley, founder and executive director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, and chair of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
“But McGonigal was on the payroll of a robust Russian,” Shelley added, referring to the incontrovertible fact that McGonigal was on Aman’s payroll. “It’s actually a cushy job that pays an awful lot. It’s a excellent job to get in retirement, nevertheless it makes him more tied to the Russian elite world wide.”
The Aman Hotel’s swimming pool.
Born within the Soviet Union, 60-year-old Doronin renounced his Russian citizenship in 1986. He’s now a citizen of Switzerland and Sweden and has spoken out against the war in Ukraine. He bought Aman in 2014 and moved its headquarters to Sweden.
Doronin dated supermodel Naomi Campbell for several years before his current partner, Kristina Romanova, a former Russian model who’s an Aman executive. He’s a martial-arts devotee of Qigong, having reportedly shown off his ability to smash slabs of marble along with his head and break metal-tipped wood spears against his throat, in keeping with Wikipedia.
Doronin, who also owns real estate development company OKO Group, has said in media interviews that he ended his business ties in Russia in 2014, when he sold his stake within the Moscow-based real estate firm Capital Group.
Last yr, RealDeal reported that court papers showed he held a stake in a separate Moscow-based company as recently as 2022, when he transferred ownership to his mother who still lives in Russia. Doronin responded that the firm merely held “legacy assets” that were being slowly liquidated and that he hasn’t been involved in any development activity since 2014.
Last yr, Doronin sued the Aspen Times for defamation claiming that the publication falsely portrayed him as a Russian “oligarch” in a series of articles about land he purchased in the world.
The lawsuit was settled and the editor of The Aspen Times, Andrew Travers, was fired. Travers penned an article in The Atlantic in August in regards to the paper’s flap with Doronin under the headline, “End Times in Aspen: Find out how to Kill a Newspaper.”
In an announcement in regards to the lawsuit, the Aman spokesperson said “the paper itself ultimately said [the articles] didn’t meet its ‘standards for accuracy, fairness and objectivity.’ Likewise, The Aspen Times expressed regret for the statements Mr. Doronin asserted were libelous and retracted and corrected several articles.”
Jennifer Gould contributed reporting.
