Jan Marsalek, Fugitive Wirecard COO used compromised intelligence officials in Vienna to spy on European citizens. This includes plotting break-ins and assassinations by elite Russian hit squads. Wirecard also acquired a Nato government’s cutting-edge cryptography machine. He also smuggled stolen phones of senior Australian civil servants’ to Moscow.
British intelligence secured new evidence, which forms the basis for allegations contained in an Austrian police warrant for the arrest of Egisto Ott, a former Austrian police and intelligence official.
Recently, Ott was taken into custody.
The warrant’s contents were first reported by Austria’s Der Standard newspaper.
As of now, they are the most extensive official allegations to date. Russia not only compromised Marsalek, 44. He may have also been one of the most powerful European intelligence assets of Kremlin. He used his position as chief operating officer at the top of a Dax-listed company to make violent secret operations in Africa and across the continent possible. That almost took over Deutsche Bank.
The warrant, consisting of 88 pages, claims Marsalek commissioned Ott, along with another senior security official. It also includes the head of Austrian intelligence operations, Martin Weiss, to facilitate undercover work for GRU or Russia’s military intelligence and FSB or domestic intelligence on European soil over a period of at leave five years since 2017. Weiss now lives in Dubai and has fled Austria ever since. He was unavailable for immediate comment.
Wirecard is a payment processing company that was once known in Europe’s fintech scene before being exposed as a fraud by FT. The recent revelations added to the concerns about Wirecard. The Financial Times exposed Wirecard, once a prominent player in Europe’s fintech scene, as a fraud.
Marsalek’s shady connections to Russia was first revealed in 2020 by FT.
