A high-ranking FBI agent who faces criminal charges will be sentenced on Thursday.

Charles McGonigal, who used to lead the counterintelligence unit in the FBI’s New York office, admitted to a conspiracy charge and requested no jail time.

Federal prosecutors argued in a sentencing memo that the ex-FBI spy chief in New York should get five years in prison for betraying his country by secretly collaborating with a Russian tycoon under sanctions.

As the head of the Counterintelligence Division in the FBI’s New York office, McGonigal oversaw and took part in probes of Russian oligarchs, such as Oleg Deripaska, whom he gave unauthorized services.

“McGonigal knew full well that Deripaska was sanctioned,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memorandum. “McGonigal also cannot claim that he was unaware that he was selling his services to a scoundrel working against America’s interests.”

“Although the first task Deripaska assigned his new recruit may not have appeared particularly nefarious, McGonigal was hoping to do millions of dollars in future work for the oligarch,” prosecutors said. “McGonigal was selling something just as useful to America’s enemies as military grade technology: The “erosion … in any rule of law” that ensues when a nation’s counterintelligence professionals begin ‘operating at the behest of the highest bidder,’ to use McGonigal’s description of his own crimes,” prosecutors said.

The defense asked the judge to consider McGonigal’s “remarkable service” to the nation during his 22-year career in law enforcement and counterintelligence. They claimed that “a sentence without imprisonment is enough to achieve justice.”

“Mr. McGonigal can receive a fair punishment without a long prison term. He has suffered a steep downfall, losing his job, his reputation and the harmony of his family life,” said defense lawyer Seth DuCharme.

McGonigal will be sentenced next year in another case in Washington, D.C., where he was charged with hiding a payment from an Albanian intelligence officer while working.

In a memo before sentencing, defense lawyers admitted McGonigal gave unauthorized services to Deripaska but said the information McGonigal gave to Deripaska about a competing oligarch was in line with the U.S. interests.

“He was wrong, and he acknowledges that. But it is vital that the Court understands, when giving a just punishment, that Mr. McGonigal thought that the work he agreed to do was in accordance with, not against, U.S. foreign policy in the sense that it helped to possibly sanction another Russian oligarch,” DuCharme said.