In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an Austrian fugitive businessman and Russian operative, Jan Marsalek (@derJanMarsalek). He's best-known for the Wirecard scandal, and for funneling money to Russian intelligence agencies and PMC Wagner's operations.
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Jan's grandfather, Hans Maršálek, was also suspected of being a Russian spy. Allegedly, Hans, a devout socialist, was responsible for assisting the Soviets kidnap at least four people and illegally render them to Moscow for torture and interrogation.
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Austria has been generally considered to be a hotbed for Russian espionage, a topic I have covered previously:
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Marsalek started working for a company called Wirecard in 2000 & in 2010 he became the firm's chief operating officer. Initially, the company focused on online payment transactions from porn & gambling industry,but eventually expanded aggressively by buying other businesses.
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Wirecard masked their financial trouble, with organic growth by adding revenues from external sources and with artificial inflation of profit. The company also attacked its critics aggressively, even hiring a hacker to infiltrate companies critical of Wirecard.
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In 2019, the Financial Times published a series of investigations along with whistleblower complaints and internal documents, exposing the company's long-term fraud. In Jun 2020, Wirecard filed for insolvency after revealing that 1,9 billion EUR had gone missing.
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Soon after this, Marsalek was fired and immediately fled. He lied to his colleagues that he was going to the Philippines to prove his innocence, before going missing. An investigation by @bellingcat, @derspiegel and @thisisinsider indicated that Jan flew to Minsk, Belarus.
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In Jul 2020, Handelsblatt reported that Marsalek was suspected to be in Russia,where he was believed to live under supervision of the Russian GRU in a mansion near Moscow. According to Die Welt, Marsalek was at a Russian FSB training center in Balashikha, a suburb of Moscow.
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As of 2020, Jan was a person of interest to many Western intelligence agencies due to his businesses with the GRU. In Munich, he lived opposite the Russian consulate. Allegedly, Marsalek made contacts with Russian intelligence through the Austrian-Russian Friendship Society.
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Intelligence officials stated that Wirecard's services were used to finance Russian covert operations, pay informers or military contractors and fund classified projects and arms purchases. Jan also asked Wirecard Bank employees to breach data-protection rules.
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Marsalek seems to enjoy the Russia, as he's visited the country over 60 times in the last 15 years. According to @bellingcat, his immigration dossier has almost 600 pages. His trips usually lasted less than 24 hours, suggesting that he was not there for sightseeing.
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Since 2015, Marsalek has also been operating in Libya, allegedly trying to launch a mercenary force to protect commercial interests in the country devastated by a civil war since 2014.
As we now know, Russia uses PMC's like Wagner to make money in countries like Libya.
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Since 2017, Russia's PMC's have been extremely active in Libya, and the first instance of Russian and PMC Wagner troops in the country was at industrial facilities in Libya that Mr. Marsalek had repeatedly claimed to co-own.
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He collaborated with the Austrian-Russian Friendship Society by giving them classified documents obtained from Austria's interior ministry & security service BVT, and provided geopolitical advice and gave classified documents to Austria's far-right populist party, the FPÖ.
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Marsalek also held highly sensitive, classified reports from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons which he disclosed to his business partners in 2018, in the wake of Skripals poisoning in Salisbury. He also claimed to have the formula for Novichok.
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In Sep 2023, a trial of five Bulgarians accused of being part of a Russian spying network began in the UK, and allegedly, this network had been given tasks by Marsalek. One of them was an award winning beautician, who ran a beauty parlor in London called Pretty Woman.
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The Bulgarians are accused, among other things, of helping the Russian state plan to kidnap people in the UK & for organizing a surveillance operation in Montenegro. An investigation conducted in 2023 concluded that Jan was recruited as a Russian agent for at least a decade.17/18
Allegedly, Mr. Marsalek is currently living in Dubai and is reorganizing Russian operations in Africa. Some have even suggested that he might be taking over late Yevgeny Prigozhin as the director of the mercenary company Wagner.
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