In 2020, Russian secret services provided former Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek, who is wanted worldwide for embezzling billions of dollars, with the identity of a priest who looked like him. A Russian woman with whom Marsalek had traveled to Chechnya in 2013 is said to have played an important role in this.
According to a “Standard” report, Austrian investigators classify two ex-BVT officials with contacts with Marsalek as an “intelligence cell” for Russia. Marsalek’s connection with the Russian secret services began in 2013, writes the newspaper, which investigated the case together with “Spiegel”, ZDF and “The Insider”.
The then board member of Wirecard was in Russia negotiating a deal with the Moscow metro transport company and a Russian businessman found him a young woman with a checkered past and supposedly good connections to the administration of the Russian capital as a supporter.
Russian acquaintances as key figures
Natalja S. is said to have previously played a cop in a ‘sex film’ who killed victims with nerve gas. Together with S., Marsalek traveled to Chechnya in 2013 to meet relatives of the local potentate Ramzan Kadyrov. According to information from the APA, this investigation was made possible in particular by a major leak of Russian flight data.
During the celebration of S.’s thirtieth birthday in Nice in 2014, Marsalek finally met an ex-elite soldier named Stanislaw P., who handed over the ex-Wircard manager to the Russian military community service GRU.
Was an ex-banker running a spy ring?
After Marsalek’s escape to the East in the summer of 2020, Natalija S. went on vacation in the fall of 2020 in a wellness hotel in Crimea, which was occupied by Russia, with a Russian Orthodox priest who “remarkably looked like Marsalek ‘. The ex-banker is also said to have led a spy ring at the time that even planned kidnappings and even assassinations in Europe, the newspaper writes.
Did ex-BVT officials spy for Moscow?
Also previously unknown, Austrian investigators have now assigned two former BVT officials to a ‘cell’, who allegedly leaked secrets on Marsalek’s behalf and sabotaged their own employer. According to the report, intelligence information from BVT and that of Western partner services ended up at the bankers’ table. Both ex-officials have denied such allegations in the past.
Source: Krone
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