TIRANA, August – The chairman of the Democratic Party (DP), Sali Berisha denounced the unconstitutional indifference of SPAK and Albanian justice towards the McGonigal affair in Albania. According to him, McGonigal prepared the manipulative file for declaring him “non grata” by the US.
“Albania will feel ashamed only a few days later, when McGonigal declares himself guilty for the crimes he committed in Albania. There can be no justice in the world, except that which operates in the full control of the government, which does not open the investigation into this matter,” Berisha said in a press conference on Thursday.
According to him, such hostile silence towards the law, the Constitution, the country’s opposition and the democratic order, can only be maintained by prosecutors and investigators, Edi Rama’s fanatical militants.
Berisha said that “the illegal criminal activity of McGonigal, Ducka, Neza and others in Albania is five years has been carried out in several directions.”
“The first direction is in Deripaska’s scheme, but with tragic consequences for a NATO member nation. His commitment in close cooperation with Edi Rama for the destruction of the Albanian opposition, for an unconstitutional coup against the opposition and the president of the Republic as an opponent of Edi Rama. Imposing multi-million fines on businesses that were under sanctions, deceiving them that they could be delisted in exchange for payments. Corrupt interventions to remove the oil license and give it to a Russian company, apparently controlled by Deripaska,” he said.
The former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiracy in connection to a scheme working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch in 2021.
Charles McGonigal, a 22-year veteran of the FBI who retired in 2018, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and money laundering, per a plea deal struck with prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The disgraced former FBI ranking official was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in January and charged in two separate indictments in New York and Washington, DC, for allegedly working with the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars he received from a former employee of an Albanian intelligence agency while he was a top official at the bureau. McGonigal’s attorney Seth DuCharme recently indicated to a federal judge in Washington that they may resolve the Albania-related case by the end of the month. /argumentum.al.
