City profile

Jan Marsalek

The fugitive chief operating officer of the defunct German payments company Wirecard, which was exposed as a fraud in 2020, has an even more sinister profile than previously thought, said Sam Jones in the FT. An Austrian police warrant, based on new evidence collected by British intelligence, suggests that Jan Marsalek, 44, was a Russian superspy: one of the Kremlin’s most powerful European assets, who used his position at the top of a Dax-listed company “to facilitate violent clandestine operations across the continent and in Africa”. The revelations add to concerns that Wirecard – a “darling of Europe’s fintech scene”, which grew so powerful that it nearly took over Deutsche Bank – may for years have been used as a Russian shadow financial network. According to the warrant, Marsalek, an Austrian citizen, used “compromised intelligence officials” in Vienna to plot assassinations by Russian hit squads and obtain a “cryptography machine” from one Nato country. Mobile phone data belonging to top Austrian officials was also handed over to Moscow. “Austria faces its biggest espionage scandal in decades,” said Stephanie Liechtenstein in The Washington Post. Marsalek, a high-school dropout turned computer whiz – whose grandfather was allegedly a Soviet spy – joined Wirecard in 2000. Reports in March suggested that he was recruited by Russia in 2014, having been hooked by Natalia Zlobina, a former actress turned Russian spy, who became his partner, said Le Monde. He “vanished into thin air” in June 2020, and is now reportedly living in Moscow.