Putin's Perfect Spy

April 11, 2024

Europe’s biggest fraud suddenly turned into its biggest espionage scandal. A sensational story in the Financial Times reads like a John le Carré thriller but isn’t fiction. Investigators have discovered that years ago Russia infiltrated Europe’s financial, political, NATO, police, and military systems. And at the center of this scheme was a middle-aged, Austrian-born Czech named Jan Marsalek who disappeared in 2020 after being charged with fraud and embezzlement involving Germany’s $2-billion Wirecard scandal. Now, four years later, he is also accused of obtaining and selling secrets to the Russians as he rose to the position of Chief Operating Officer of the German payments processing giant. He commingled his crimes. He sold the Kremlin access to Wirecard’s confidential data base containing financial information about millions of people. He embezzled funds and also used his company’s transactions business to bribe officials and finance Russian undercover operations and crimes. “Marsalek used compromised intelligence officials in Vienna to spy on European citizens and plot break-ins and assassinations by elite Russian hit squads,” wrote FinTimes’ reporter Sam Jones.