Jan Marsalek remains one of the most wanted men in the world. His financial imperium raised billions of euros, and when the bubble burst, over 6,000 employees lost their jobs, 2 billion EURO were never found. However, as it turned out later, this was only the tip of the iceberg of the dark side of the once “successful” Wirecard CFO.
The story with the Russian trace began in 2011, when Marsalek first traveled to Russia to sign a contract with the Russian Megafon. After that, the trips became regular, and an opportunity to conclude a lucrative deal with the Moscow Metro appeared on the table. It was then that Natalia Zlobina, an attractive Russian woman with signs of a spy life, appeared in Jan’s life. It was she who introduced the Austrian fraudster to Stanislav Petlinsky, a Russian “military expert” who collaborates with various intelligence services and who in 2014 handed Marsalek over to the Russian GRU.
Since then, Jan’s life has changed dramatically: a flight on a MiG-29, a trip to the war zone in Syria, an office in Munich on the other side of the street to the Russian embassy. At the same time, Wirecard was growing on paper, but the first searches by financial services had already begun in the office. For some time, he also hired Martin Weiss, the former head of Department II of the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight against Terrorism (BVT), Austria’s domestic intelligence service. All this to conduct investigations in the interests of Russian special services.
Marsalek not only made sure that about 2 billion dollars disappeared from the company’s accounts. dollars, which led to bankruptcy, but also organized a criminal group in the EU that was engaged in spying on officials of interest to the Kremlin. So in the end, that’s where his escape to Russia was headed. First Minsk, then Russia, and then the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Crimea. After that, the trail disappeared, because the spy has a dozen passports and other identities.
No matter how interesting and confusing this story may seem, the conclusions are quite obvious. Russia uses every opportunity to destabilize Europe – financial factors, the migrant crisis, spy stories. Therefore, any organization or individual associated with the Russian government can and most likely does pose a threat to the EU. We can only hope that the time will come when Marsalek will be captured and tell his side of the story from the dock.
