Good morning. A former high-level U.S. counterintelligence agent pleaded guilty to accepting secret payments from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska after accepting a deal with prosecutors that reduces the amount of prison time he faces for the offense.

The guilty plea entered by Charles McGonigal in Manhattan federal court represents a spectacular admission for a former senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who retired from the agency in 2018 after a career that saw him rise to become the head of the agency’s counterintelligence operations in New York, a position where he held insight into some of the agency’s most sensitive investigations.

• What are the charges? On Tuesday, McGonigal said he had agreed to do open-source research for Deripaska on one of the oligarch’s rivals, Vladimir Potanin, in hopes of getting the latter Russian added to U.S. blacklists. McGonigal accepted $17,500 from the oligarch in 2021, knowing that the work and the payment, which he admitted trying to conceal, violated sanctions that were placed on Deripaska in 2018.
   
• McGonigal's response: “As you can imagine, this has been a painful process,” McGonigal told the court during an emotional declaration. “I appear before you and this court to take full responsibility for [my actions].”
   
• Impact of case: The charges against McGonigal, announced with his arrest in January, have made waves in law-enforcement circles and at the FBI in particular. The charges have raised questions about the influence of Deripaska, who a Senate report has characterized as “a key implementer of Russian influence operations around the globe.”

Inotiv faces SEC probe on imports of monkeys from Asia.

Inotiv, a pharmaceutical testing company, faces an investigation into whether its monkey-sourcing practices may have violated U.S. anti-foreign bribery law.

Possible FCPA violations. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sent Inotiv a request for documents and information relating to the company’s and several subsidiaries’ importation of “non-human primates” from Asia, including whether its practices comply with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Inotiv said in a recent securities filing. Inotiv is fully cooperating with the SEC’s voluntary requests, a representative said.

• The U.S. is in talks with Turkey, Ukraine and Kyiv’s neighbors to increase the use of alternative export routes for Ukrainian grain, officials said, after Russia pulled out of an agreement that guaranteed the safety of food shipments across the Black Sea.
   
• British police have arrested five people, including at least three Bulgarian nationals, believed to have been living undercover in the U.K. while working for Russian intelligence, the latest in a series of arrests across Western countries of alleged Russian agents posing as seemingly ordinary people.
   
• A number of university trustees, faculty and staff members are calling for more transparent financial data that they can access about their schools in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation that highlighted large spending increases at 50 state flagship universities.
   
• TSG Entertainment, which helped finance hits including “Avatar: The Way of Water” and the “Deadpool” franchise for Twentieth Century Fox, is suing the studio and its parent company Disney for alleged breach of contract.
   
• Vesttoo, an Israeli startup that aims to use artificial intelligence in the insurance industry, filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Monday after being accused of acting as a conduit for a multibillion-dollar fraudulent scheme involving faked letters of credit.
   
• The court fight over Hunter Biden’s botched plea deal intensified Tuesday as prosecutors blamed the implosion on defense missteps and a lawyer for the president’s son stepped down, saying he would testify as a witness in future battles over the now-defunct agreement.

China slashes rates, suspends youth jobless data as economy signals sharper downturn.

Chinese officials said they would stop reporting the country’s youth unemployment rate after months of spiraling increases, depriving investors, economists and businesses of another key data point on the declining health of the world’s second-largest economy.

The surprise move extends China’s efforts to restrict access to a variety of data on its economy and corporate landscape to outside scrutiny.

At the same time, China’s central bank unexpectedly cut a range of key interest rates, an emergency move to reignite growth after new data showed the economy slid deeper into distress last month.

• China Turns to Well-Honed Playbook: Cut Rates, Hide Data
• China’s Central Bank Cuts Two Key Policy Rates

• Russia’s central bank jacked up its key interest rate at an emergency meeting to stem a sharp selloff in the ruble and resurgent inflation, a response to the mounting financial costs of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
   
• Energy-rich countries across the Middle East and North Africa are struggling to keep power flowing to their own citizens during intense summer heat, with Egypt the latest to impose rolling blackouts.
   
• The United Auto Workers said Tuesday labor negotiations with the Detroit automakers have been sluggish and the union would hold a strike authorization vote next week, a procedural step needed for its leadership to call a work stoppage.

• Donald Trump faces a dilemma as his criminal cases pile up and his first presidential primary contest nears: how will he divide his time between campaigning and fighting in court.
   
• A takeover of United States Steel could create a new industry leader—and draw pushback from antitrust authorities and steel buyers.
   
• Home Depot expects cost inflation to ease in the back half of the year as pandemic-era pressures that plagued its supply chain finally recede.
   
• Americans boosted their retail spending last month at the fastest pace since the start of the year, as consumers continue to bolster the resilient U.S. economy.
   
• Japan’s economy expanded at a much faster pace than expected in the April-June quarter thanks to robust exports, outpacing growth in the U.S. and China.
   
• To revive the U.S. chip industry, the Biden administration has launched one of the most significant acts of government intervention since World War II—and it is relying on masters of the free market to deliver the goods.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

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