Spying claims are latest twist in Germany's Wirecard thriller
The plot thickens in the spectacular collapse of payment
provider Wirecard: the Austrian man at large over Germany's worst financial
fraud scandal may also have had links to secret services.
Jan Marsalek, Wirecard's former chief operating officer, has
vanished since the technology company was busted for what accountants described
as an "elaborate and sophisticated fraud".
Once a darling of the fintech scene, the payments provider
filed for insolvency in June after being forced to admit that 1.9 billion euros
($2.1 billion) missing from its accounts likely did not exist.
Wirecard's former chief executive and founder Markus Braun
turned himself in to police, but Marsalek remains at large.
On Friday, the Financial Times and Austrian daily Die Presse
in separate reports said Marsalek had access to highly confidential
information, suggesting he had links to secret services.
- Novichok recipe -
Marsalek passed on confidential information from Austria's
secret services and interior ministry to the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe),
said Die Presse.
The exchange took place through a middle man identified as
Florian S., who was reportedly close to the FPOe.
The information allegedly fuelled the FPOe's mistrust of its
then coalition partner, culminating in controversial police raids of the
intelligence services in 2018.
Marsalek also flaunted his access to secret information in
Britain, according to a report in the Financial Times.
In an attempt to impress business associates, he is said to
have shown them documents containing the recipe for the nerve agent Novichok,
used to poison Russian-born ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in
Britain in 2018.
According to the FT, Marsalek bragged about his links to
secret services in a bid to impress members of the London financial services
sector -- possibly part of efforts to identify speculators betting against the
Wirecard share price.
Sources interviewed by the FT said Marsalek had an
association with individuals or networks linked to Russia's military
intelligence directorate, the GRU, which Britain has blamed for the poison
attack.
Also in 2018, Marsalek is said to have unveiled a plan at
his lavish home in Munich to recruit 15,000 Libyan militiamen -- in a country
under growing influence from Russia and the GRU.
This project apparently had a humanitarian pretext, but its
true purpose remains unclear, according to sources cited by the FT.
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