The Wirecard scammer was revealed to be the crown jewel of Kremlin espionage – 2024-04-08 05:28:15

The corporate fraud fugitive used Vienna authorities to spy on Europeans and plan burglaries and assassinations carried out by Russian hit groups. He also got his hands on the SINA computer stolen from the NATO administration, which is equivalent to the modern Enigma encryption device, and smuggled phone data of Austrian officials to Moscow, reported the Financial Times.

This is the second manager of the German payment service company Wirecard, Jan Marsalek, who fled Europe after the company’s fraud was revealed. Marsalek lives today in Russia, where he was able to escape with the help of his Austrian contacts.

The revelations that have come out now have increased suspicions that the Wirecard company has been used as a shadow financing network for years. With the help of the company, Russian secret operations have been paid for and facilitated, hidden from the eyes of NATO’s security services.

Marsalek was exposed as a spy shortly after the company’s collapse in 2020. Last month, a group of media outlets including Der Spiegel and The Insider reported that Marsalek had been recruited by the Kremlin as early as 2014.

Based on the suspicions, Marsalek may indeed be one of the Kremlin’s most powerful intelligence agencies in Europe. And his position at the Wirecard company facilitated the transmission of information, in addition to which he is suspected to have participated in enabling He violent operations across Europe and Africa.

Austria has been the most important concentration of Marsalek’s networks. The country’s espionage law allows spies to operate fairly freely as long as they are not spying on the Austrian state. Austria’s partners have tried to pressure the state to tighten its laws, because Vienna has developed into a European espionage center.

Jan Marsalek has been wanted in Germany after the Wirecard fraud was revealed. EPA / AOP

Police arrest

The new claims are based on new evidence obtained by British intelligence. They were part of the former Austrian police and intelligence authority Egisto Ottin arrest last week Friday. Otti’s arrest warrant shows that Austria was the core of Marsalek’s networks.

According to the charges, Ott has requested confidential information from the authorities of other European countries, especially about persons whose movements Russia wanted to track. Many of them have been Russian dissidents or Russian spies.

Ott has prepared an analysis of how Russian assassins would best avoid being caught in Europe, passed on information to Marsalek and helped him with smuggling. With Otti’s help, Marsalek was also able to send the stolen SINA encryption machine to FSB headquarters.

He gave Marsalek the entire contents of the cell phones of three top officials in the Austrian Ministry of the Interior. One of them was the head of the ministry responsible for all police and intelligence activities in Austria. The phones fell into Otti’s hands when they accidentally fell into the Danube during a boat ride. Officials believed that police experts might be able to recover data from the phones.

Ott copied their contents and gave them to Marsalek, who sent the sensitive information to Moscow. Later, several politically embarrassing news stories based on WhatsApp messages from the phones appeared in the Austrian press.

Ott has denied his guilt. He admits that he knows Marsalek, but claims that he has not been aware of his shady dealings.

Affidavit seen by the Financial Times claims that Marsalek gave both Otti and the head of Austrian intelligence operations To Martin Weiss tasked with overseeing the secret work of Russia’s military intelligence (GRU) and domestic intelligence service (FSB) in Europe for at least five years, starting in 2017.

Weiss has fled Austria to Dubai.