(…) In twin indictments last month, McGonigal was charged with taking secret cash payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, holding secret meetings with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and attempting to remove top Kremlin oligarch Oleg Deripaska from a US sanctions list.
The Albanians cited by prosecutors tie this scandal to Hunter Biden and the Chinese energy company CEFC that paid him and uncle Jim Biden millions of dollars in a deal which Joe Biden was slated to join after his vice presidency ended.
According to prosecutors, McGonigal received $225,000 in cash in the fall of 2017 while he was the FBI’s counterintelligence chief in New York, from an Albanian former intelligence official, identified in the Albanian and European media as Agron Neza.
Mayor of Tropoja, Rexh Byberi (r), and former intel official, Agron Neza (l), recognize Charles McGonigal (c) with an award on September 23, 2021. (Credit: public domain)
In turn, Neza introduced McGonigal to another well-connected Albanian, Dorian Ducka, who was an adviser to Rama and also worked for CEFC.
Edi Rama (l), Dorian Ducka (c), and Charles McGonigal (r) (Credit: VOX News Albania)
A photograph published last month in Albanian media sourced from China Daily in May 2017 shows Ducka standing with CEFC chairman Ye Jianming, who famously gave Hunter a 3.16-carat diamond estimated to be worth $80,000 in February 2017.
(…) Why were the Albanians paying McGonigal?
According to Belind Kellici, the Opposition Democratic Party candidate for May’s mayoral election in Tirana, Albania, McGonigal opened FBI investigations into political opponents of Albanian Socialist Party PM Rama, probes used to declare them personae non gratae, unable to do business or open a bank account in the US. (Read more, New York Post, 2/15/2023) (Archive)