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https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/jan-marsalek-an-agent-for-russia-the-double-life-of-the-former-wirecard-executive-a-7e667c03-6690-41e6-92ad-583d94ba97e0

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Jan Marsalek an Agent for Russia? The Double Life of the former Wirecard Executive

It’s the middle of summer in Nice, and the Mediterranean is lapping gently against the walls of the quay. A man with shortly trimmed dark hair in a black suit and a radiant white shirt is striding briskly toward a cutter. A second man is carrying his case. An attractive woman – tall and blond, her summer dress fluttering in the wind – is pacing on the aft deck of the Poseidon III, laughing nervously. Her name is Natalya Zlobina, and she is the Russian lover of Jan Marsalek, one of the most-wanted men in Europe.

DER SPIEGEL 10/2024

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 10/2024 (March 2nd, 2024) of DER SPIEGEL.

SPIEGEL International

The scene, recorded by a camera at the Port of Nice, becomes a bit blurry. The man in the black suit climbs down a ladder to the Poseidon III and greets the woman with a kiss. She laughs; he seems annoyed. Now, it's possible to recognize his face, well-known these days from the wanted posters plastered on the walls of train stations and airports: It is Jan Marsalek himself, the former COO of Wirecard, which was once listed on Germany’s blue-chip stock index, the DAX. He has been on the run since June 2020.

The moment hardly lasts a minute, and it can be seen in the video that the woman quickly makes it clear to him that the cutter is just part of a little prank. The real ship is rocking in the waves one slip over – a luxurious mega-yacht, of course, where a group of laughing men is waiting. Later, Zlobina will celebrate her 30th birthday here. It is July 6, 2014, the day on which Jan Marsalek’s life will change. The day on which he will meet a man with excellent ties to the Russian military secret service agency GRU, and on which he will apparently begin his second life as a spy.

Marsalek’s story has thus far been more of a financial thriller, already an almost unbelievable tale of fraud, lies and deception. A story of a school dropout rising to become the COO of the financial company Wirecard, a firm considered for a time as one of the most powerful newcomers to the German economy in decades, courted by government ministers and premiers. But Wirecard’s success, as would become clear, was a sham. Billions of euros in account balances evaporated, almost 6,000 people lost their jobs and top executives were arrested.

The drama is now taking a bizarre turn, the plot gets even crazier. Suddenly, the financial thriller has become a spy thriller. And the main character is no longer a charismatic trickster, but a villain straight out of a James Bond movie, cynical and dangerous. A man who is still on the run today. But where is he? And how has he managed to escape the authorities all this time?

Joint reporting by DER SPIEGEL, German public broadcaster ZDF, the Austrian newspaper Der Standard and the Russian investigative platform The Insider has now found some answers. On the basis of confidential documents, mobile phone data, travel records, lab results, investigation files, emails and chats, Marsalek’s story can now be told in its entirety. Marsalek isn’t just the main character in one of Germany’s largest ever financial scandals. He is also – so it would seem from interviews with secret service agents, police investigators and people from his orbit – a spy working for the Kremlin. A man whose activities in his role as an agent endangers lives. Marsalek has apparently commissioned Bulgarian accomplices to track Moscow’s critics across all of Europe, spy on them and possibly even eliminate them. The plot was uncovered at the last moment by the British domestic intelligence agency MI5.

Marsalek’s ties to Russian secret service agencies go back an entire decade. It seems that he was initially recruited by the GRU, but he is also thought to have worked for the KGB’s successor agency, the FSB, in recent years. Zlobina, his girlfriend, is also in touch with men from the security services. Over the several years Marsalek spent as the head of a DAX-listed company, he was apparently able to quietly expand his spying network, traveling to Russia on more than 60 occasions and using six Austrian passports and a diplomatic document to do so.

There are plenty of indications that Marsalek also involved Wirecard in Russian intelligence activities – that money was laundered and mercenaries were paid through the company. Was Marsalek using Germany’s model company to help an adversarial power? Did a DAX-listed company assist in the waging of war? How did all this take place without German intelligence officials taking notice?

Jan Marsalek’s tracks lead into a shrill parallel world that feels at times like a poorly lit B movie. At others, it slips into the horror genre. It includes scenes with flights in MiG fighter jets and rocket-propelled grenades are fired in Syria. And others with champagne parties on the Côte d’Azur and mercenary armies are recruited in Libya. Characters include agents, nude models, mercenaries, politicians, psychopaths and murderers.

And a Russian priest who has astounding similarities to Jan Marsalek.

THE PRIEST

Halfway between Moscow and Rostov-on-Don lies the city of Lipetsk. Founded in the early 18th century by Peter the Great, it is home to half a million residents today. At a traffic circle on the way into the center of town is a charming, 200-year-old chapel with a golden dome and a façade colored brightly in yellow, blue and white. Twice a day except for Tuesdays, a priest named Konstantin Bayazov holds services there. He has a dark beard and shortly trimmed hair. If you watch the priest during his services, you start seeing similarities to Marsalek, and the two men’s birthdays are also just a single year apart. The parallels were also apparently noticed by Russian secret service agents.

Marsalek's Russian passport, passport file, Pastor Konstantin Bayazov

Bayazov – the real Bayazov – hasn’t used his own passport since September 2020. Because since then, there has been a second Bayazov, a fake one. The passport file was changed on September 5, 2020, and a new passport was issued with the number 763391844. Both the file and the travel document now include the scowling image of Jan Marsalek.

A contact person is also included in the file, complete with a telephone number: Evgeniya Kurochkina. She is thought to provide assistance to the Russian domestic intelligence agency FSB. According to leaked information from Russia, Kurochkina has regularly telephoned and traveled with a Moscow-based agent of the authority.

This won’t be the only moment in the course of this story that feels like you’ve suddenly landed in a spy novel by John le Carré.

MARSALEK, THE GAMBLER

Marsalek established his first ties to Russia in 2010. Shortly before that, he had become a member of the executive board of the financial services provider Wirecard, a company that was largely unknown at the time. Wirecard’s main line of business was taking care of the technical processing of credit card payments for online vendors. Early on, that consisted primarily of porno and gambling sites. But the head of the company, Markus Braun, was looking for more. A native of Vienna, Braun saw himself as an intellectual visionary and was fond of wearing black turtle-neck sweaters like Apple’s Steve Jobs. And he, too, wanted to lead a global company.

Marsalek, who is also Austrian, was Braun’s right-hand man. He had started working for Wirecard – called Wire Card at the time – when he was 20 as "Director Technology" for a starting monthly salary of 9,000 deutsche marks – not bad for someone who had just dropped out of school. But Marsalek was good at programming and understood the new network technology. That was enough to impress the founder of Wirecard.

Braun and Marsalek would prove to be a dream team, they were ambitious and brash. Their goal was global expansion, envisioning telecom companies, airlines and retailers all taking care of their digital payments through Wirecard. The company’s stock price climbed continuously, even if its revenues and profits didn’t keep pace early on. In February 2010, Marsalek was promoted to chief operating officer.

The two were also interested penetrating the Russian market, and their door opener was Florian Stermann, the enigmatic and somewhat shady president of the Austrian-Russian Friendship Society. With his assistance, Wirecard began negotiating with the Russian telecommunications company Megafon in 2011. Wirecard was hired to provide prepaid credit cards for mobile phone customers, but the project failed. The company got a second chance to secure a significant deal in Russia though – by processing transactions for the Moscow subway, with its 7 million passengers per day.

It was up to Marsalek to usher the deal to completion, and he began making frequent trips to Russia. It was a life he quickly took to – the world of the international executive, complete with luxury hotels and gourmet restaurants. It was a validation for him, a school dropout with no advanced degree who had always wanted to prove everyone wrong and leave all those behind who just seemed to get in his way. Including his mother.

Marsalek was born in Vienna on March 15, 1980, and grew up just a few kilometers away in the town of Klosterneuburg. He went to a French private school before attending the local high school. He was a good student, quite talented. "Eloquent," with a "great aptitude for computer sciences," say former teachers.

But he was also a child who always had a hard time with rules and conventions, as his mother told DER SPIEGEL with a shake of her head just a few weeks after Marsalek’s disappearance. The interview took place in July 2020 in an old farmhouse not far from Vienna. She reverted to her birth name years ago and asked that it not be used in print. She said she hadn’t been in touch with her son for quite some time. She calls him a "arrogant showoff."

A few old photos from his childhood still exist. One of them shows him wearing a gray coat and a floppy hat that is far too big for him, looking like the cliché of a secret agent. His father was hardly ever at home during the week due to his job as the managing director of a company in the Czech Republic. Back home, says his mother, arguments were frequent.

Childhood photos of Jan Marsalek

In June 1999, she says, her son suddenly moved out after a fight. For a long time, the only indications that he was alive came in the form of mobile phone bills and past-due notices, she recalls. She kept track of his career through the media. "I was always suspicious of Wirecard. The fact that Jan rose so quickly in the company without a diploma, how is that possible?"

"Charisma," is the response given by almost all former Wirecard employees when asked that question. Former teachers, past lovers and former friends agree. Even as a 20-year-old, Marsalek exuded self-confidence and intelligence. "You immediately see him as a successful person who knows what he is talking about and what he is doing," says Pav Gill, the former chief legal officer for Wirecard in Asia. "A genius salesman who attracts people," says a former confidant. "He is eloquent, charming and extremely intelligent," says Jörn Leogrande, the former head of innovation for Wirecard.

It was an impression reinforced by Marsalek’s lifestyle, which included parties in Saint Tropez and 15,000-euro dinners in the Mandarin Oriental in Munich, including several 2,500-euro bottles of champagne and Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac to wash it down.

But he was also erratic. Before long, the deal with the Moscow metro ran into difficulties and Marsalek seemed to lose interest in Russia. It was at this moment that Natalya Zlobina made her appearance. The dubious Russian businessman Sergey Lee, say people who were present at the time, recommended her with the warmest of words. Zlobina, he told Marsalek, citing her excellent contacts in the Moscow administration, could save the metro deal.

Surprisingly good contacts for a 29-year-old who had, to that point, primarily made a name for herself as an online erotic model. In the horror sex film "Red Lips 2 – Blood Lust," she plays a Russian secret agent who kills her victims with a neurotoxin. Being an agent was apparently a role she was comfortable with – also, it seems, in real life.

One clue is the fact that her personal information is closely protected. Access to her passport file in an official database was temporarily blocked, with officials instead providing information for a completely different woman. Someone also deleted Zlobina’s travel data from a police system. Such security measures are frequently used by Russian secret service agencies to protect their operatives.

Zlobina was also likely acting as a "honey trap" for Marsalek, a term used in the agency world for attracting a target with a romantic liaison.

The subway deal between Moscow and Wirecard never actually materialized, but the relationship between Marsalek and Zlobina quickly deepened beyond mere professional interests. They took quick trips together to places like Barcelona and Santorini, with Marsalek picking up his new girlfriend in Moscow with a private jet. These and dozens of other trips can be retraced with the help of confidential flight and border-crossing databases, internal emails, chats and reports from acquaintances.

Zlobina, vacation photos from Jan Marsalek

The two of them were looking for adventure, sources close to them say when describing their relationship. Marsalek apparently called her "Zebra," and she allegedly had an animal nickname for him as well.

In September 2013, the couple took a trip to the Chechnyan capital of Grozny, apparently to meet relatives of the dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, according to witnesses. Kadyrov’s clan, the witnesses say, had parked around $100 million in accounts in Hong Kong and were looking for a way to get the money to Western Europe, laundered.

Zlobina allegedly introduced Marsalek as the one who could solve the problem. Wirecard was taking care of large financial transactions every day. Perhaps nobody would notice a few extra million?

Witness accounts in combination with trips taken by both Zlobina and by a Kadyrov confidant show that people involved met later on two occasions, once in Vienna and once in Asia. Whether a deal ever actually took shape is unclear. But Marsalek apparently proved his worth in one way or the other.

A couple of months later, in summer 2014, on that warm July evening in the Port of Nice, it was time for the next, decisive step. A special guest was in attendance for Zlobina’s birthday party. According to the recollections of other guests at the party, she introduced him to Marsalek as "Stas," saying he was a "general."

His complete name is Stanislav Petlinsky, a figure from the shady world of the Russian security apparatus who is as illustrious as he is indistinct. In the 1990s, he worked for the Russian special forces unit Spetsnaz and was later part of the Presidential Administration of Russia in the Kremlin, according to people close to him. After that, his rank and his role become less clear. Western agents believe Petlinsky works for several Russian secret service agencies.

Marsalek, in any case, was smitten from the very beginning, say those who witnessed the early days of their friendship. Others say you can see Marsalek from two perspectives: Marsalek before Stas, and Marsalek after Stas.

Marsalek wined and dined his friend Stanislav Petlinsky for the latter's birthday at the high-end Munich restaurant Tantris.

Marsalek had an interest in weapons? Stas offered to arrange a shooting training session for him. Yan had questions about the underground world of Russian secret service agencies? Stas seemed to have all the answers.

Petlinsky would later tell some that he handed Marsalek off to the GRU after their first meeting. That would mean that starting in summer 2014, Marsalek was a tool of Russian secret service agencies, a view shared by Western intelligence officials.

Zlobina knew that Marsalek was an adrenalin junky, and they took a flight together in a fighter jet. One photo shows Marsalek sitting in a MiG-29 wearing a pilot’s helmet and oxygen mask, giving the thumbs up. A "Top Gun" fever dream.

Zlobina and Marsalek in a MiG fighter jet

Petlinsky guided Marsalek into the world of the Russian secret service. Companions say that Marsalek even presented himself as an agent during this period. Others recall his interest over the years in the art of disappearing without a trace, in fake identities and escape routes. "It was a constant topic, almost an obsession," says one person close to Marsalek.

Petlinsky also introduced Marsalek to a brawny man who occasionally wore a Hells Angels sweatshirt. He called him "Vladimir, my mercenary." In Moscow, he was known as "Biker," likely because of his predilection for rocker gang gear. His real name is Anatoly Karazy. He is thought to have served as an officer with the GRU special forces together with Petlinsky in Chechnya. After leaving the military, Karazy joined the notorious mercenary army Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization so powerful that it has its own secret service – of which Karazy had taken over leadership by 2017, at the latest.

On May 5, 2017, the Wagner secret service chief Karazy flew from Moscow to Munich for a meeting with Marsalek. The two traveled onward together in a private jet to Beirut, where they met Petlinsky. From there, the trip took them across the mountains to the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, where the Russian army, Wagner mercenaries and troops from Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s military were fighting against Islamic State and against insurgents. At around this time, Wagner members were involved in torturing civilians to death in the area.

Marsalek and his two Russian companions stayed for several days. Photos show the Wirecard executive wearing aviator sunglasses, a bulletproof vest and a combat helmet. In one photo, a rapid-fire rifle can be seen. In another, the ancient Roman theater of Palmyra.

Marsalek and Petlinsky in Syria, Petlinsky with rocket-propelled grenade launcher

Some say that Marsalek fired at Islamist fighters. Anatoly Karazy did not respond to a request for comment about his past and about Marsalek.

Was the trip to Syria just another example of Marsalek’s addiction to adrenaline? Or were the Russians, was Petlinsky, interested in getting Marsalek to do things for which he could later be blackmailed?

DER SPIEGEL received a tip: Those interested in finding Stanislav Petlinsky would be advised to have a look in Dubai, on the terrace of the hotel restaurant Al Mandhar at the five-star beach resort Jumeirah al-Naseem. Guests there are served champagne and beluga caviar among the palms and pools. In the background is the shimmering Persian Gulf and the Dubai trademark Burj Al Arab. This, apparently, is where Petlinsky likes to meet his business contacts.

On a Friday in mid-February, the terrace is full of young Russian women dressed in luxury labels and accompanied by muscular men wearing olive green T-shirts. The oligarch Alexander Lebedev, a former secret service officer, can be seen sitting in one of the pavilions next to his wife, a model and influencer with 2.7 million followers on Instagram. The news is just spreading on the internet that the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has died in prison.

It doesn’t take long before Petlinsky actually does appear on the terrace. In his early 60s, he is wiry and muscular, a physique clearly visible from his fitted, light-gray pinstriped suit and tight black T-shirt. On his left wrist, he is wearing a silver Rolex, his eyes are hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses, and his hair is shorn close. He nods to the oligarch Lebedev, who nods back.

Yes, he says, he met Marsalek back on that yacht in the South of France. "You know what? I was in love with him from the very first moment," Petlinsky says with a laugh.

Why?

"He has such a wonderful spirit," Petlinsky says. "I always think so small, in terms of what’s possible. Jan always thinks big – really, really big."

What do you mean?

Petlinsky says that the office of German chancellor would probably be too meaningless for his friend. A big project like leading Europe, China and Russia together as a counterbalance to the United States, he says – that’s the kind of thing that would interest Jan.

So he’s a star-gazer?

Petlinsky doesn’t want to say anything bad about his friend Jan. "Jan always had himself under control." He wanted his brain to be working at maximum capacity. "Jan wasn’t addicted to anything," says Petlinsky, "except perhaps to power."

Marsalek is "a nerd," always "super precise, a bit autistic really." And then Petlinsky, who has excellent contacts with mercenary leaders, says: "Human relationships are not Jan’s biggest strength. He lacks empathy."

The skyline of Dubai, Marsalek in a Learjet

It isn’t difficult to tell that this conversation is lasting longer than he wants. A couple of tables away, a man in mirrored glasses and golfing shorts is waiting. A young woman comes by looking for attention. "Moscow people," says Petlinsky.

Does Marsalek work for Russian intelligence services?

No, but he is "obsessed with the world of espionage," says Petlinsky.

Did Petlinsky introduce him to a lot of people in Russia?

Yes, including "high-ranking decision-makers," some of them members of the Duma, Russia’s parliament.

Including agents?

Petlinsky changes the subject. He is apparently well-versed in laying false trails and interweaving truth with fiction.

Is Petlinsky himself currently with the GRU, and in what rank?

There is no evidence for this, he responds. Petlinsky claims to be a "security consultant," only to later talk about personal encounters with President Vladimir Putin. And about how he once tracked a corrupt FSB officer around the world, catching up to him in Montenegro. He complains about how unprofessional the Berlin Tiergarten park murder was, referring to the 2019 murder of a Georgian enemy in the German capital committed by an FSB killer who was then captured. Petlinsky makes clear that he would have liked to kill the murder victim himself – and would have then spit on the body.

Tattooed, militaristic-looking men show up on the terrace, some of whom drop by for a chat. He shakes hands with some. A "hero," he says on one occasion, indicating a brawny mercenary who, says Petlinsky, has 3,000 men under his command in Ukraine. Petlinsky seems to know almost everybody here. The hotel terrace in Dubai appears to be something of a hub for Russian mercenaries, businesspeople and much, much younger women.

"What was it like in Syria?"

He apparently finds the subject unobjectionable and freely confirms it. The trip with the Wagner commander, he says, had been a dream of Jan’s that he was able to fulfil.

And what about Marsalek’s boasts that he had been allowed to shoot at Islamists?

Petlinsky smiles. Jan, he says, had likely imagined flying in a helicopter with the side door open, loud music and Ray-Ban sunglasses. He says he quickly took a hand grenade away from Jan.

And what about firing at people. What weapons did he use?

Petlinsky is silent for a moment. Then he uses the abbreviation RPG, rocket-propelled grenade. It had been "cool for Jan," he says, when someone instructed him on the correct way to position his legs when shooting from a lying position. "We may have also told him roughly in which direction the front was." Later, Petlinsky will write in a message to DER SPIEGEL that firearms training was "a standard part of preparing to travel to crisis areas."

Petlinsky now wants to bring our conversation to an end, perhaps because it was taking an uncomfortable turn: After Marsalek disappeared, an employee of Petlinsky’s arranged a Russian passport for him – after which he and Jan apparently spent time together traveling in Russia.

"Who told you that?" Petlinsky wants to know. "I have great respect for your work, but you might also make mistakes."

What about the spy ring that Marsalek had apparently established, and the allegedly planned kidnappings and assassinations that Western agencies were able to foil.

That was alarming, says Petlinsky. But murders were certainly never part of the plan, that was falsely interpreted. Petlinsky smiles.

You can insist over and over again that he is clearly lying, that there is evidence for certain things. But Petlinsky just draws down the corners of his mouth and shrugs. He has to go, and politely declines when asked about being photographed. Sorry guys.

MARSALEK’S TWO LIVES

Many of those who encountered Marsalek in Munich in summer 2017 shortly after his return from Syria describe him as having been "completely exhilarated." At Wirecard headquarters on the outskirts of Munich, meanwhile, the mood was jubilant. The company was expanding rapidly – to Africa, Australia, Asia and North America. The hype was immense. After a wait of several decades, Germany had finally produced another global player, a company that appeared to be in the big leagues – at a time when German banks, even years after the financial crisis, still hadn’t returned to health. Commerzbank was almost broke and Deutsche Bank was but a shadow of its former self.

At Wirecard, though, it seemed that the future of banking was taking shape, with software solutions for the kind of payment transactions that made online shopping possible in the first place. According to company records, Wirecard was processing payments for 279,000 clients per year, including the supermarket chain Aldi and travel company TUI.

But rumors were swirling. People were saying that Wirecard was inventing profits and cooking the books, that the company was sleazy. Money laundering was mentioned.

In 2015, Munich prosecutors searched Wirecard offices on behalf of U.S. authorities. Additional investigations took place in the U.S. It remained unclear what they found.

Braun and Marsalek responded to the accusations with irritation. Everything was just malicious attempts at stock price manipulation by hedge funds and journalists, they said. They had naysayers shadowed and threatened by private detectives.

In 2018, Wirecard became part of the DAX, the German blue-chip index that included, at the time, the 30 most valuable and most important companies in the country. With more than 270,000 customers, Wirecard processed 125 billion euros in transactions and generated 560 million euros in revenues that year. At least according to the balance sheet. Later, it would be declared void. Either many of the declared sales didn’t actually exist, which is what prosecutors believe. Or they were funneled by Marsalek through dark channels, as claimed by Braun, who has been in investigative custody for three years and denies all of the accusations leveled against him. At the time, though, nobody saw what was going on. In fact, Braun and Marsalek were even planning a takeover of Deutsche Bank, an operation they had codenamed "Panther."

Marsalek’s main job was to make Wirecard even bigger, and to do so as rapidly as possible. Increasingly, though, he became something of a phantom at Wirecard headquarters, largely invisible even for senior managers. "Nobody really knew what he did," says a colleague. For several years toward the end, Marsalek only rarely stepped into his 110-square-meter (1,180-square-foot) office on company premises on the outskirts of Munich.

Instead, he built up his own center of operations around 10 kilometers away in the center of Munich. It was here where his two lives – the official and the secret – would merge.

The four-story, art nouveau villa at Prinzregentenstrasse 61 is one of the most exclusive addresses in the Bavarian capital, a property of more than 1,600 square meters filled with Italian furniture, bronze sculptures and paintings of historic battles. Acquired in 1903 by Prince Alfons of Bavaria as a prestigious aristocratic residence, it was later inhabited by Conrad Röntgen, the discoverer of x-rays. Starting in 2016, the villa served the Wirecard executive as a hub for his secret operations. At least some of the 680,000 euros in annual rent was covered through back channels by Wirecard. At the time, the Russian consulate was located on the other side of the street.

Marsalek's headquarters on Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich, photos from his office there

Marsalek set up his office on the first floor, receiving his visitors in an elegantly furnished meeting room. Leaning against a wall of the office was the framed Austrian declaration of war against Sardinia from 1859. The room was frequented by politicians, bankers and agents. The visitors included a former Libyan intelligence chief, a former senior domestic security official from Austria – and, on one occasion, a former chief of staff from Helmut Kohl’s Chancellery, Bernd Schmidbauer. And Petlinsky, of course, often.

"People were coming in and out all the time," says a woman who worked closely with Marsalek for many years. She was already at his side when he first made it onto the Wirecard board of executives in 2010. For this story, we have chosen to refer to her as Johanna Singer; she requested anonymity as a condition for being interviewed for this story.

She also got to know Petlinsky in the Prinzregentenstrasse villa. "I thought he was really nice," she says, adding that he talked about his grandchildren. Singer arranged a birthday party for him in the gourmet restaurant Tantris in Munich. A photo shows him laughing at a table together with Marsalek, a star-shaped birthday cake between them.

Singer says she only learned later from state prosecutors about the many other shady characters who frequented the villa. Did she really think things were completely normal? That Marsalek equipped the villa with medical supplies, hospital beds and gas masks? That he invited a security expert in from Israel to inspect the place for surveillance devices? "As I now know today, Jan had a number of different personalities."

She paints the picture of an erratic man who liked to live life on the edge, a man who, after leaving work, would go to the cinema in tailor-made Brioni suits to watch spy films. An adrenaline junky with a tendency for hypochondria for whom she would quickly fly over to London just to buy his favorite cough syrup.

Some investigators raise their eyebrows when Johanna Singer is mentioned. She has been questioned several times – as a witness, not as a suspect, investigators emphasize. But it is also just as true, they say, that Singer is likely holding back information. She has been too close to Marsalek for too long, they say.

It is hard to believe, for example, that in all these years she never noticed who had turned into of the most important regulars in Prinzregentenstrasse. For Singer, he is just "a former civil servant from Austria" who is now "working as a consultant in the private sector." But Martin Weiss wasn't just any civil servant. For years, he had headed Department II at the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), the Austrian domestic intelligence service. There, he had been responsible for gathering information, conducting investigations and analyzing intelligence. A top agent in charge of the core operational business of the intelligence service. All intelligence information collected by the BVT ended up in the department he oversaw. That includes all information sent to Vienna by partner services such as the CIA, the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution or Israel's Mossad.

After Weiss officially left the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Marsalek hired him as a "consultant." But the two had probably known each other since at least 2015. It appears that Marsalek needed Weiss mainly as a henchman for dirty agent work and not really for Wirecard business.

For example, to investigate people of interest to Marsalek and the Kremlin in particular. It was an easy game for Weiss, with his network in Western intelligence services. Weiss had searches conducted of more than two dozen people in internal databases to find out what the authorities knew about them. They included Marsalek's own family and Petlinsky, as well as journalists living in Europe and a Kazakh opposition activist.

Weiss would later admit some of it following his arrest in interrogations with the special investigation unit of the Austrian Interior Ministry.

According to documents from the investigation, it was "conspicuous" that people, "apparently in the interests of the Russian Federation," were investigated with particular frequency. Also striking was the fact that it took quite some time before the Austrian intelligence service took notice of Marsalek. A Viennese special investigation unit called AG Fama, which was investigating possible Russian moles in the BVT, only came across him after Marsalek's escape. Today, the investigation file comprises thousands of pages. The investigation came to the conclusion that Weiss and Marsalek were part of an "intelligence cell whose capacities and capabilities were used by Russian intelligence services."

IN THE KREMLIN'S SIGHTS

Marsalek's activities could have been discovered earlier, in part because yet another agent also belonged to the cell: A brawny, cagey veteran of the BVT with the mellifluous name Egisto Ott, a controversial figure in the Austrian intelligence scene for some time. As early as 2017, foreign intelligence services – presumably the American CIA and the British MI6 – had sounded the alarm. Ott, they said, had repeatedly sent data from his official e-mail address at BVT to his private account. The foreign intelligence services presumed that he was spying for the Russians. His superior at BVT at the time was Martin Weiss.

Ott was suspended, but his network continued to function. He used it to gather sensitive information on target persons for Weiss and Marsalek. To that end, he apparently employed informants at home and abroad to make inquiries for him on official service computers. Weiss allegedly paid Ott thousands of euros for his work, as investigators would later determine. Ott has denied the allegations.

Despite the severity of the accusations, he was released after a short period in custody. It takes a bit of looking around in Austria these days if you want to talk to him. Neighbors haven't seen him at his apartment in Vienna for some time. But in Ott's home region of Carinthia, in a valley near Wörthersee lake, a beautiful estate lies shimmering in the winter sun.

A few hours later, Mr. and Mrs. Ott emerge to walk their dog. Ott, a stocky man with a green quilted jacket and a firm handshake, agrees to a walk with the DER SPIEGEL reporter.

"You can tell that I'm a Russian spy just by the fact that I still have my old mobile phone number," he jokes. He says the accusations are baseless, a vast conspiracy by influential opponents in politics and the intelligence service – because he knew too much. In long monologues, Ott tells outlandish stories about ransom money that allegedly disappeared during hostage rescues and ended up in the pockets of his enemies. "I never took part in breaking the rules, but always did an excellent job," says Ott. He claims they just wanted to shut him down.

Mountains of investigation files on Ott's activities cast a few doubts on his account. How the flow of information appears to have worked, through various channels and connections, is demonstrated by the screenshot of a chat that Ott saved on his iPhone 8 on September 10, 2019. In the message, Petlinsky turns to his friend Marsalek with a problem. The mistress of Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg and her sister were constantly having trouble when crossing borders into Europe. Marsalek, at the time still a Wirecard board member, forwarded the message to his helper Martin Weiss and asked "whether we could provide support in the matter." Petlinsky confirmed the instance, but said that the request had just been a favor for the two women.

It fell to Ott to actually take care of the task. As further text messages suggest, Ott apparently asked a police colleague in Italy for discreet help. The Italian returned two weeks later after uncovering some information. The women, he found, had an entry in the European border search system SIS that had been issued by Latvia for undercover checks on the grounds of "terrorism." In this manner, sensitive data found its way to Petlinsky and thus to Moscow.

A question to Ott during the walk: How could this assignment have had a work-related purpose? His answer: "I didn't make an inquiry with us. This is verifiable: There is nothing."

The probes carried out by Ott and Weiss could sometimes be extremely threatening for those affected, as shown by the case of a journalist who was spied on. Christo Grozev has spent many years investigating the machinations of Russian intelligence services. Grozev was head of the renowned research platform Bellingcat and now works for DER SPIEGEL. He contributed to this article.

Grozev's investigative reporting has revealed the most terrible secrets of the Russian state, uncovering the intelligence ties of the killer of Georgian national Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin's Tiergarten park in August 2019. Reports from Bellingcat about the secret service men who poisoned the now deceased politician Alexei Navalny in 2020 caused a global sensation. Jan Marsalek was also the focus of Grozev's attention on several occasions: One DER SPIEGEL article traced his escape route to Minsk in Belarus and revealed for the first time dozens of trips to Russia made by the former executive in previous years.

Accordingly, Grozev has long held a high position on the Kremlin's wanted list. Early last year, Western security authorities gave the journalist, who was living in Vienna at the time, a sudden warning that he should leave Austria as soon as possible. He says he was told that they had concrete knowledge of attack plans by Russian services. Grozev relocated.

Around two years earlier, on December 15, 2020, Weiss had sent an encrypted message to Ott. It read: "Could we make a query in Austria about a Mr. Christo Grozev?" In a later message, Weiss wrote to Ott: Grozev is supporting an operation "against the cause." Ott then provided the address of Grozev's private apartment.

Ott confirms the interaction during our walk with him in Carinthia. "All I did was go to the Registration Office and pay 3.40 euros to find out where he lives." He says he also may have taken a few photos of Grozev's building. That's not illegal, he adds. Why was Weiss so keen to know where Grozev lived? Did the assignment come from Marsalek? Ott claims he never gave it any thought. He denies that he may have helped Putin's spies locate an enemy. "I always fought the Russian intelligence service throughout my career," he says.

In any case, he says, the investigations into his activities were sloppy and not conducted in accordance with the rule of law. This is one reason why he was released from custody, he says. And it is true that despite years of investigation, the Public Prosecutor's Office has yet to bring charges, as is also the case in the investigation into Weiss. This has prompted suspicions among high-ranking officials that someone in Vienna is stepping on the brakes. Is the influence of Marsalek's network in Austria still so strong that investigations into suspected collaborators are fizzling out?

In the meantime, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been reformed, renamed and most of its personnel replaced. But there isn't enough evidence against some agents who were considered close to Marsalek and Weiss to remove them from office, one intelligence officer complains. The danger is real that Marsalek is still spying on Austrian authorities, politicians and companies on behalf of Russian services, the intelligence officer says.

WIRECARD, A RUSSIAN ENTITY?

Why was Moscow interested in recruiting Marsalek in the first place? There is much to suggest that it was his position as Wirecard's chief operating officer that sparked Moscow's interest.

An agent in a company that is involved in global payment transactions: how practical.

All kinds of sensitive information wound up at Wirecard headquarters, all the more so once the company joined the DAX index of blue-chip German companies. Dozens of international companies processed some of their financial transactions through Wirecard. Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office was also a customer and regularly used the company's payment technology. At one point, Marsalek instructed subordinates to compile a year's worth of customer data – allegedly, as he said, for the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency. It would later turn out that the BND had never actually requested the data. Instead, it's possible that the confidential information wound up in Moscow.

Also extremely useful was the fact that Wirecard organized its business in Asia through so-called third-party partners. Billions in transactions for customers were processed outside of Wirecard, but the revenues were credited to the company and the supposed commission income was booked to escrow accounts. Even for the auditors, the cash flows were extremely difficult to understand. Hardly surprising then that it took quite some time before it was discovered that billions of euros in Wirecard funds were not in the accounts where they were purported to be held. The whole structure seemed like it had been designed for money laundering.

Some in intelligence circles even allege that Marsalek helped to pay agents and informants of the Russian GRU through Wirecard, a claim that has thus far not been verified.

Several sources did, however, confirm that Marsalek likely used Wirecard funds to buy his own mercenary company through proxies, to be deployed in crisis zones.

Apparently, Marsalek wanted to make himself more and more useful to his Russian friends. What could he do? According to people close to him, Petlinsky had a few ideas, and pointed out that war-torn Libya needs to be rebuilt. Russia has a great interest in the North African country, which is rich in oil and gas reserves – and is also in a position to manage refugee flows to Europe. Petlinsky is said to have suggested getting involved in the business of cement, which would ultimately be needed for reconstruction. The sources claim that Marsalek promptly invested in cement factories.

The people close to Petlinsky also say he made Marsalek aware of an experienced Russian company operating in the gray area between mercenary operations and security service called the RSB Group. The company, Petlinsky allegedly told Marsalek, had experience in counter-terrorism missions, providing protection against pirate attacks and, most importantly, a license for mine clearing. Marsalek was impressed, but he didn't just hire the outfit for a mission in Libya, he apparently immediately bought the entire company. Marsalek now apparently owned his own mercenary company through a murky construct. Petlinsky denies having advised Marsalek to make the investments.

An RSB mercenary in Libya, the logo of the Wagner Group

And Marsalek had even bigger plans. On June 28, 2017, he described them to crisis expert Kilian Kleinschmidt, who had worked for the United Nations for many years, at Käfer-Schänke, an upscale restaurant in Munich.

Kleinschmidt was commissioned with completing a study for Marsalek, for 200,000 euros, on how Libya could be rebuilt. The invoice, as Kleinschmidt notes today, was to be sent to the "Russian-Libyan Cultural Institute" in Moscow. Initially, he says he thought the goal was to make Libya a better place for people to live.

But at a second meeting, this time at the villa on Prinzregentenstrasse, Marsalek dismissed the first proposals from Kleinschmidt's team as "childish" and revealed his real idea: a military "conversion program" that would train 15,000 to 20,000 Libyan militiamen. According to this idea, the private army was to control Libya's southern border and thus the migration flows.

Kleinschmidt wanted nothing to do with it and was disconcerted. Also because during a coffee break Marsalek had raved about the new equipment that mercenaries were wearing in the field. And of "cool bodycams" that produced videos in top quality. Behind it all was a gruesome idea that Marsalek also presented to Petlinsky: Wagner mercenaries could use these cameras attached to their uniforms to broadcast their fight against the Islamists on the Internet. They could livestream their murder and pillaging. Viewers who liked what they saw should be given the opportunity to donate to the militia in return. The only problem, Marsalek reportedly said, is that the existing Wagner videos "cannot be used as advertising because the boys shoot all their prisoners."

Kleinschmidt wanted nothing more to do with the project, and the two sides ended their collaboration. Of the 200,000 euros that had been promised, Kleinschmidt ultimately only received 80,000 euros.

And the German security authorities? Why hadn't they sent a swarm of agents after Marsalek by that point? From their perspective, they say in Berlin, Marsalek was just a businessman. They simply had no reason to suspect that he was working for Russian intelligence services. In any case, they could hardly start monitoring board members of DAX companies who were flying to Moscow, they claim, saying it really wasn't their job.

An official statement from the Chancellery offers a similar tone. There were "no indications" that "would have justified the intelligence services to take action," it reads.

Part of the problem is that the counterintelligence department inside the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, is small. Meanwhile, the BND is only now starting to rebuild its counter-intelligence operations. Since the end of the Cold War, German security authorities have been focused on terrorists, not spies. Some Berlin agents also complain that they are now being so strictly controlled and regulated that they are barely able to do their work.

The officers concentrate on monitoring registered agents in embassies, although Marsalek probably never even had anything to do with them. He met his intelligence service contacts in Moscow, on the Côte d'Azur or in Tripoli, far away from German observers.

Furthermore, many politicians were vying for the attention of executives at Wirecard. That also likely contributed to a broader unwillingness to take a closer look at the company. On the contrary.

When Wirecard entered the Chinese market for digital payment processing in 2019, the consulting firm of former German Economics and Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg helped with support at the highest political levels. Close advisors to Chancellor Angela Merkel were also involved. In September 2019, when Merkel traveled to Beijing, she put in a good word for Wirecard in China.

The German Finance Ministry, then led by current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, also lent a helping hand. And all this even as the allegations of fraud and money laundering against Wirecard were growing louder.

According to sources close the chancellor, Scholz never met with Wirecard executives during his time as finance minister. They say that Wirecard did not receive any more international support from the German government than other German companies.

That could be true. At the same time, "other German companies" weren't suspected of fraud.

MARSALEK'S NEW IDENTITY

Barely nine months after Merkel's trip to China, Wirecard AG filed for insolvency on June 25, 2020, because almost 2 billion euros had disappeared from escrow accounts. Or it never existed in the first place. Marsalek went into hiding. The ID of one of Petlinsky's business partners was used to rent a private jet, and a contact of former agent Weiss organized two trustworthy pilots. False tracks were then laid towards Asia, and Philippine immigration officials were even bribed to fake Marsalek's entry.

In reality, Marsalek landed in Belarus on the night of June 20 and then continued by car toward Moscow, according to confidants of Marsalek who were involved in the escape plans. They claim his escape had been organized by a political functionary who is otherwise in charge of Russian-Libyan relations. In addition to Russian citizenship, the man also holds a passport from Belarus. And he is, how could it be otherwise, a close acquaintance of Petlinsky.

Then there was silence for several weeks. Marsalek had to wait for his new Russian identity, taking the name of the priest Konstantin Bayazov. On September 5, the document was picked up, and the Petlinsky confidant and suspected FSB aide Evgeniya Kurochkina rented a minibus and drove with Marsalek to Crimea. This can be seen by the location data of her mobile phone number, which was obtained by The Insider, and other evidence. Petlinsky was most likely with them. Whether Natalya Zlobina joined them as well is unclear.

On the evening of September 8, Kurochkina's mobile phone was logged in Sevastopol, Crimea. The peninsula annexed by Russia seems to be popular among those who need to disappear quickly. Barely a year earlier, in August 2019, the family of the man who killed the Georgian in Berlin's Tiergarten park was hidden here as well, accompanied by an FSB agent.

Now, it was Marsalek and his friends who showed up. The next morning, on September 9, the group ordered several taxis, according to leaked phone data, and scoured hotels on the southern coast of Crimea. Marsalek apparently checked into one of the overnight accommodations. There, he presented his new passport for registration and an employee scanned it. DER SPIEGEL has seen the document. It is the passport of the priest Bayazov with Jan Marsalek's photo.

There are indications that Marsalek later assumed the identity of Alexander Schmidt in Moscow, and probably also that of a second Russian priest, Vitaly Malkin.

The group initially stayed in Crimea for a few days. Petlinsky chartered a private jet from Simferopol airport in Crimea back to Moscow on September 12, according to booking data. But there was apparently a problem and he didn’t board the flight. Petlinsky ultimately returned to the Russian capital one day later. And that's the point where the trail to Marsalek is lost.

Petlinsky confirmed to DER SPIEGEL that he was in the area at the time and that he flew back on a private jet. But he denied having helped Marsalek escape. When asked about the allegations, Evgeniya Kurochkina, the passport courier, said that interactions between strangers should be "beneficial for both sides" – in other words, she would only provide information for money. Natalya Zlobina left a request for comment about all the accusations unanswered. When asked about Marsalek over the phone, the priest Bayazov said that he couldn't say anything about it. "Why do you refuse to understand that?" Marsalek's defense attorney left an extensive list of questions unanswered.

Did this also mark the end of Jan Marsalek's career as an agent? No. Marsalek apparently continued looking for other ways to make himself useful to his Russian masters. Ways that were even more extreme. The trail leads to a courtroom in Britain.

It's raining in London on this gray autumn day in October 2023 – what else might you expect in a spy thriller? Inside: A wood-paneled hall, the judge in a robe and wig is enthroned on an upholstered seat. "My Lord," the barristers say when addressing him. The benches, the chairs, the stairs: Everything squeaks and creaks in the Old Bailey, Britain's most famous criminal court. Three men and two women follow the preliminary hearing via video link from different prisons with grim expressions on their faces.

The accusations of the public prosecutor's office weigh as heavily as the air is thick in the hall. They claim that Jan Marsalek conspired with the defendants between August 30, 2020, and February 8, 2023, to gather information that is directly or indirectly useful to an enemy and thus harmful to the interest and security of the state, according to a court document.

British agents and criminal investigators claim that Marsalek commissioned the gang to spy on people disliked by the Kremlin, follow them across Europe – and presumably kidnap or even eliminate them in the end. London police arrested the Bulgarian defendants in February 2023 on suspicion of espionage. The domestic intelligence service MI5 had been monitoring them for some time.

In addition to the group's forged passports and masses of travel data, around 80,000 chat messages serve as key evidence, the public prosecutor's office says. According to the prosecutors, the spying was part of kidnapping or assassination plans by Russian agencies. The exact instructions for the Bulgarians allegedly came via Telegram messages from Marsalek. They were apparently paid by cryptocurrency and in cash through an intermediary.

It is not known exactly how the group came to the attention of counterintelligence. But they apparently hit the right target. Investigators allegedly found electronic surveillance equipment and 19 forged documents, including press cards and clothing labeled "Discovery Channel" and "National Geographic." Apparently, some of the suspects had posed as journalists during their clandestine operations.

Businessman Orlin Roussev, 46, a surveillance specialist, is believed to be the ringleader of the group of agents. The British investigators likely tracked down Marsalek through Roussev, an old acquaintance of his from the Wirecard days. As emails between him and Marsalek show, he seemingly provided the executive with specially secured mobile phones several years ago. Roussev once wrote to Marsalek that he knew a Chinese provider who was "more than capable" of delivering "customized solutions" for smartphones and other electronic devices.

In early February, the German authorities revealed just how seriously they now take the danger posed by Marsalek. The key witness in the Wirecard trial, Oliver Bellenhaus, was released from custody on conditional release after around three and a half years. The former Dubai representative of Wirecard heavily incriminated Braun and Marsalek in the trial.

Since then, Bellenhaus has been escorted to and from the high-security Munich courtroom two heavy vehicles. Because of articles published by DER SPIEGEL and other media on the agents allegedly led by Marsalek and operating out of London, the public prosecutor's office and the police consider it necessary to provide Bellenhaus with a security detachment.

The trial in London against the Bulgarian spy ring is due to begin at the end of this year. Some of the targets are still in danger to this day because Moscow has them in its crosshairs.

The alleged principal and ringleader Jan Marsalek will most likely not be in the dock. He remains missing, well hidden by his Russian protectors, largely invisible.

It's a bit like the Loch Ness Monster: Allegedly spotted again and again, but never caught. Some sources believe he is in Thailand, others say India. And then digital tracks point to Caracas in Venezuela. The Kremlin has written to the German judiciary suggesting that they ask around in Kazakhstan. And the Wall Street Journal has reported that Marsalek is in Dubai.

That's also where Petlinsky happens to be.

What does he say when asked where Marsalek can be found? "I don't know, we lost contact because of the pandemic," Petlinsky said on a warm February day in the desert sun of Dubai.

He smiles. "Probably somewhere nice."

With additional reporting by Kate Manchester

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