The Russian Spy Embedded in the World of Embedded Finance

Singapore's Approach to the Wirecard Scandal and Related AML-Crimes
vs The Russian Approach and Jan Marsalek's Role
This summary explores these contrasting approaches based on the incidents and regulatory
responses surrounding Wirecard.
Singapore has taken a multi-faceted approach to address the Wirecard scandal and
broader issues of financial crime:
1. Criminal Prosecution:
○ Wirecard-Specific Cases: Singapore has actively pursued criminal charges
against individuals directly involved in the Wirecard fraud. This includes jail
sentences for former Wirecard Asia employees and ongoing trials for
individuals like Shan Rajaratnam and James Henry O'Sullivan, accused of
falsifying documents and abetting fraud.
○ Director Dereliction of Duty: Thilagaratnam Rajaratnam, a company
director, was jailed for failing to exercise due diligence, highlighting
Singapore's stance against corporate negligence, even in cases where
individuals claim ignorance of fraudulent activities within their companies.
2. Regulatory Fines and Penalties:
○ Financial Institutions: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) imposed
substantial fines on major financial institutions like DBS, OCBC, Citibank, and
Swiss Life for breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism
financing regulations related to Wirecard. This demonstrates a commitment to
holding financial entities accountable for lapses in due diligence and risk
management.
3. Strengthening Regulations:
○ Family Offices: In response to the involvement of family offices in the
broader money laundering case, Singapore is reviewing and tightening
regulations for these entities, particularly regarding tax incentives.
○ Information Sharing: Singapore is establishing a digital platform for banks to
share information on suspicious activities, enhancing collaboration between
financial institutions and authorities to detect and prevent financial crimes.
4. International Cooperation:
○ Collaboration with Germany: Singaporean authorities are cooperating with
German prosecutors in the Wirecard case, recognizing the global nature of
financial crime and the need for cross-border collaboration to effectively
investigate and prosecute such offenses.
5. Public Messaging:
○ Maintaining Reputation: Singaporean officials have emphasized that the
actions taken against Wirecard-related crimes and the broader money
laundering case demonstrate the country's commitment to maintaining its
reputation as a clean and transparent financial center.
This comprehensive approach aims to deter financial misconduct, protect the integrity of
Singapore's financial system, and uphold its standing as a trusted global financial hub.
Overall, Singapore's approach reflects a combination of:
● Strong enforcement of existing laws and regulations.
● Proactive measures to strengthen financial oversight and prevent future crimes.
● International cooperation to address the global nature of financial crime.
● Public communication to reassure investors and maintain the country's reputation.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vsolodkiy/

Overall, the Russian approach, as revealed in these documents, demonstrates a
sophisticated and multi-layered strategy that combines financial manipulation, espionage,
and political influence to achieve its objectives. Jan Marsalek's role as a key asset in this
strategy highlights the potential risks posed by individuals with access to sensitive
information and networks who are willing to collaborate with foreign intelligence agencies.
The documents reveal a complex and multifaceted Russian approach, with Jan Marsalek,
the former Wirecard COO, playing a central role in their intelligence operations.
1. Marsalek as a Russian Asset:
○ Recruitment and Early Involvement: Marsalek was recruited by Russian
intelligence as early as 2014, likely through a romantic relationship with a
Russian agent. He quickly became a valuable asset due to his position at
Wirecard, a prominent German financial services company, and his access to
sensitive financial data and networks.
○ Espionage Activities: Marsalek is suspected of engaging in various
espionage activities on behalf of Russia, including:
■ Passing confidential information to Russian intelligence agencies.
■ Facilitating the movement of funds and payments for Russian
operations.
■ Assisting in the recruitment and management of other agents.
■ Coordinating the surveillance and potential harm of Russian dissidents
in Europe.
2. Wirecard as a Tool for Russian Intelligence:
○ Money Laundering and Illicit Activities: Wirecard is suspected of being
used by Russian intelligence for money laundering, financing mercenary
activities, and other illicit operations. Marsalek's position within the company
provided a convenient cover for these activities.
○ Exploiting Financial Data: Marsalek's access to Wirecard's financial data
and systems could have been exploited by Russian intelligence for various
purposes, including identifying potential targets for financial crimes or gaining
insights into global financial flows.
3. Infiltration of Austrian Intelligence:
○ Compromised Officials: Marsalek, with the help of Russian intelligence, is
alleged to have compromised high-ranking officials within Austria's domestic
intelligence agency (BVT). These officials provided him with sensitive
information and assisted in his operations.
○ Political Influence: Marsalek and his Russian handlers attempted to
manipulate Austrian politics to gain further control over the country's
intelligence apparatus. This involved discrediting the BVT and promoting
pro-Russian figures within the government.
4. Broader Implications:
○ Threat to European Security: Marsalek's activities and the infiltration of
Austrian intelligence highlight the ongoing threat posed by Russian espionage
in Europe. The case raises concerns about the vulnerability of Western
institutions and the potential for Russia to exploit financial systems for its
intelligence goals.
○ International Cooperation: The investigation into Marsalek's activities has
involved extensive cooperation between intelligence agencies in the UK,
Germany, Austria, and other countries, underscoring the need for international
collaboration to counter Russian espionage.

Russian Companies Face Major Hurdles with International Banking
Following Ukraine Invasion
In February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin's military invasion of Ukraine triggered a
cascade of geopolitical and economic consequences. Within months, Russian companies,
particularly those linked to oligarchs who support Putin and his war efforts, began facing
significant challenges with their overseas banking transactions and accounts.
By March and April 2022, the situation had escalated sharply. The global banking sector
responded to the invasion with increased scrutiny and sanctions, leading to a rapid
contraction in the availability of financial services for Russian entities abroad. This
contraction was most pronounced in jurisdictions with stringent regulatory frameworks, such
as the United States.
The invasion prompted an international outcry, resulting in a series of sanctions aimed at
crippling the Russian economy. Western nations, led by the United States and European
Union, imposed severe financial restrictions on Russian banks, companies, and individuals.
This move was designed to isolate Russia from the global financial system and weaken its
economic foundation.
The impact was immediate and severe. Russian companies found themselves unable to
access their foreign accounts, execute international transactions, or even maintain basic
banking relationships. The banking restrictions particularly targeted oligarchs and companies
known for their close ties to the Kremlin, effectively cutting them off from crucial financial
networks.
Demand for any form of access to foreign banks skyrocketed geometrically as the availability
of such services plummeted. Russian businesses scrambled to find alternative banking
solutions, but options were limited. The US, in particular, enforced strict measures, freezing
assets and denying access to its banking system for numerous Russian entities. This
created a bottleneck that further strained the ability of Russian companies to conduct
international business.
The shortage of banking options forced many companies to seek out less conventional and
more expensive alternatives, often involving intermediaries in countries with more lenient
regulations. However, these measures were merely stopgaps and did not provide a
sustainable solution to the mounting financial isolation.
The repercussions of these banking constraints extended beyond immediate financial
transactions. They hindered Russian companies' ability to invest, procure necessary goods
and services from international markets, and maintain global partnerships. The uncertainty
and instability also led to a decline in investor confidence, further exacerbating the economic
woes of Russian businesses.
As the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues, the long-term economic implications
for Russian companies remain uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the invasion of
Ukraine has significantly reshaped the landscape of international banking for Russian
entities. The stringent sanctions and the subsequent banking crisis have created an

environment of unprecedented financial isolation, with far-reaching consequences for
Russia's economy and its position in the global market.
Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, international sanctions have
imposed significant challenges on Russian companies, especially those with connections to
oligarchs and the Kremlin. These sanctions have led to a multitude of problems, including
restricted access to banking services, frozen assets, and increased scrutiny from financial
institutions globally.
Few Examples of Sanctions and Their AML-Impacts
Here are some prominent examples and cases from the media highlighting the financial
troubles faced by Russian oligarchs and the related anti-money laundering sanctions across
the globe:
1. Banking Restrictions and Asset Freezes: The U.S. Department of the Treasury's
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed full blocking sanctions on major
Russian banks, such as Sberbank and Alfa-Bank, which are crucial to the Russian
economy. This action, initiated in April 2022, aimed to cut off these institutions from
the global financial system, severely limiting their ability to conduct international
transactions and access foreign funds (U.S. Department of the Treasury1
).
2. The Freezing of Bank Accounts and Assets: Many oligarchs faced similar freezes
of their bank accounts and assets in various jurisdictions, making it difficult to access
their wealth and conduct business.
● Roman Abramovich: The former owner of Chelsea Football Club had his assets
frozen in the UK, including the club itself, leading to its sale. His accounts in
Switzerland were also reportedly frozen.
● Oleg Deripaska: This aluminum magnate had his properties in the US seized and
his companies sanctioned, causing significant financial strain.
3. Challenges in Compliance and Risk Management: Global banks and businesses
faced unprecedented challenges in applying these sanctions. Many institutions opted
to "de-risk" by avoiding business with Russian entities altogether. This has led to the
severance of account relationships and a significant reduction in funds transfers tied
to Russia. Compliance has become costly and complex, exacerbated by inconsistent
guidance from various international regulatory bodies (Thomson Reuters: Clarifying
the complex2
).
4. Anti-Money Laundering Crackdowns: These revelations have prompted
governments and regulatory bodies to strengthen their anti-money laundering
measures, making it more challenging for sanctioned individuals and their associates
to operate in the shadows.
● The Pandora Papers: This massive leak of financial documents revealed the
complex offshore structures used by Russian oligarchs and politically exposed
persons to hide their wealth and evade taxes. This exposure led to increased scrutiny
and investigations by authorities worldwide.
● The FinCEN Files: This leak revealed suspicious activity reports filed by banks to
the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), highlighting the role of
2
https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/investigation-fraud-and-risk/russia-sanctions-paper-2022/
1
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0705

global financial institutions in facilitating money laundering and sanctions evasion by
Russian-linked entities.
5. Impact on Russian Elites and Oligarchs: The multilateral Russian Elites, Proxies,
and Oligarchs (REPO) Task Force immobilized approximately $300 billion worth of
Russian Central Bank assets and blocked or froze tens of billions of dollars worth of
assets belonging to sanctioned Russians. This included luxury real estate and other
high-value assets, significantly impacting the financial standing and international
reach of Russian elites (U.S. Department of the Treasury3
).
6. Broader Economic and Industrial Effects: Sanctions have led to major output
declines in critical sectors of the Russian economy, such as automotive, aerospace,
and electronics. Production shutdowns at key defense-industrial facilities and a
reliance on inferior foreign suppliers have further degraded Russia's military-industrial
complex. Additionally, Russian companies have faced severe shortages of essential
components, leading to a decline in exports and overall economic contraction.
7. The Impact on Russian Businesses: Numerous other Russian companies with ties
to oligarchs or the Kremlin have faced similar challenges, hindering their growth and
competitiveness in the global arena.
● Severstal: This steel giant, owned by Alexei Mordashov, faced difficulties accessing
international markets and financing due to sanctions, leading to a drop in its share
price and operational challenges.
● Rusal: This aluminum producer, once controlled by Oleg Deripaska, experienced
disruptions in its supply chains and financial operations due to sanctions, forcing it to
restructure and reduce its output.
8. Financial Sector Contraction: The Russian financial sector reported a dramatic
90% decline in net profits year-on-year in 2022, illustrating the profound impact of
these sanctions. The banking and business sectors had to invest substantial
resources in understanding and complying with new regulations, which included
heightened anti-money laundering measures and efforts to counter the financing of
terrorism.
These examples illustrate the multifaceted impact of international sanctions on Russian
companies and the broader economy. The geopolitical repercussions of the Ukraine invasion
have created an environment of financial isolation and uncertainty, making it increasingly
difficult for Russian businesses to operate on a global scale.
3
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1298

Behavior Pattern of Putin-Related ex-Soviet Oligarchs
Catherine Belton's (FT, WSJ) book "Putin's People" provides numerous examples and
insights into the behavior patterns of Putin-related oligarchs, especially the tendency to say
one thing and do another. This duplicity is a recurring theme in the behavior of many
Putin-era oligarchs, reflecting their background and strategies derived from KGB practices.
1. Manipulative Public Messaging:
○ Catherine Belton's book "Putin's People" faced several legal challenges,
particularly from prominent Russian businessmen like Roman Abramovich
and Mikhail Fridman. Despite these settlements, both Fridman and
Abramovich have been sanctioned by the US and UK for their
connections to Putin and alleged support for his activities, including the
invasion of Ukraine. This juxtaposition highlights the pattern of public denial
and legal action against accusations while simultaneously being implicated by
international authorities for their close ties to the Kremlin and support for
Putin's regime (Law Gazette1
) (Press Gazette2
).
i. Abramovich sued for defamation, arguing that the book contained false claims about
his purchase of Chelsea Football Club being directed by Vladimir Putin to gain
influence in the UK. The lawsuit resulted in HarperCollins agreeing to amend certain
sections of the book and add more detailed explanations regarding Abramovich’s
motivations for buying the club. These amendments clarified that some of the
allegations lacked supporting evidence, which HarperCollins and Belton
acknowledged (RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty3
).
ii. Similarly, Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven also brought legal claims against
HarperCollins. They challenged the book’s depiction of their business activities and
alleged ties to the Kremlin. These claims were settled with HarperCollins agreeing to
remove or amend certain statements in future editions of the book. The legal actions
were seen by some as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), aiming
to intimidate and silence critical journalism (Press Gazette4
)
○ Liberal Economic Reforms vs. Authoritarian Control: Early in his
presidency, Putin implemented liberal economic reforms, such as introducing
a flat income tax and pursuing land reforms, which won international praise
and investor confidence. However, these reforms were accompanied by a
consolidation of state control, aiming for an authoritarian governance model
akin to Augusto Pinochet's Chile. Despite appearing pro-market, these moves
were part of a broader strategy to strengthen state power and maintain
control over economic flows and political dynamics (The Moscow Times5
)
(Global6
).
2. Deceptive Financial Practices:
○ Shadow Financing and Corruption: Putin and his associates frequently
engaged in murky financial dealings under the guise of legitimate economic
activities. For instance, Mikhail Kasyanov, known for his pro-Western
6
https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/07/07/putin-s-people-conversation-with-catherine-belton-event-7379
5
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/10/17/catherine-beltons-putins-people-is-essential-reading-a75310
4
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/putins-people-journalist-and-publisher-settle-roman-abramovich-libel-claim/
3
https://www.rferl.org/a/abramovich-libel-case-belton/31382654.html
2
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/putins-people-libel-claims-not-attack-on-free-speech-and-public-interest-journalism-abramovich
-lawyer-tells-court/
1
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/abramovich-settles-putins-people-libel-action/5111005.article

economic stance, was involved in dubious debt deals that secretly financed
the regime. Similarly, oil-for-food schemes in St. Petersburg were used to
create slush funds under the pretext of economic necessity but were
strategically aimed at maintaining intelligence networks and paying off key
stakeholders (HarperCollins Publishers UK7
).
○ Verbal Assurances vs. Written Absurdities: In many instances,
Putin-related oligarchs would verbally justify actions like canceling deals using
strategic reasons (such as ROFR?). However, their written communications
would often cite absurd or unrelated reasons (such as "the inability to attract
financing"?) without logically explaining how this related to their actual
strategic maneuvers. This pattern of giving one explanation verbally and
another in writing creates a veil of confusion and obscures their true
intentions and actions (Pushkin House8
).
Behavior pattern:
In various interviews, including those with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
and Pushkin House, Belton has elaborated on these patterns. She highlighted how the Putin
regime's inner circle would frequently engage in deceptive practices, presenting a facade of
legitimate business dealings while simultaneously siphoning funds for personal gain and
strategic purposes. This duality is deeply rooted in their KGB past and the clandestine
methods they adopted during the Soviet era. Belton's extensive research and interviews with
key players reveal a consistent theme of manipulation and strategic deception, characteristic
of the ex-Soviet oligarchs' approach to consolidating power and wealth under Putin's regime.
For more detailed insights, you can refer to Belton's book.
Read more: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/anti-war-russians-face-many-problems-oligarchs-do-vladislav-solodkiy-jeeme/
8
https://pushkin-house.squarespace.com/putins-people-by-catherine-belton
7
https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/putins-people-how-the-kgb-took-back-russia-and-then-took-on-the-west-catherine-belton

The ﬁve accused are Katrin Ivanova, Bizer Dzhambazov, Orlin Roussev, Ivan Stoyanov and Vanya Gaberova
in London SEPTEMBER 26 2023
Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of Wirecard who disappeared after the
German payments company collapsed, was on Tuesday named as a connection to
Bulgarian nationals living in the UK who have been charged in London with suspected
spying for Russia.
German authorities suspect Marsalek is in Moscow after he left Austria on a private jet to
Minsk when Wirecard filed for insolvency in June 2020.
Five Bulgarian nationals — three men and two women — were on Tuesday remanded in
custody after appearing via video link at Westminster magistrates’ court in London.
The five face a charge of conspiring to collect information for the Russian state over a
period of three years.
Jane Croft
Political espionage
Former Wirecard executive linked to alleged Russian spying ring
Jan Marsalek named as connection to Bulgarian nationals accused of espionage by UK authorities
28.07.2024, 14:45 Former Wirecard executive linked to alleged Russian spying ring
https://www.ft.com/content/25058ffb-3408-429b-ab8c-582bd49531ef 1/4

Jan Marsalek, formerly of Wirecard, is now believed to be in Russia © Police Munich/AFP/Getty Images
Prosecutor Kathryn Selby outlined the charges to the court and alleged that all five
defendants had carried out surveillance and information-gathering on targets from several
locations on behalf of the Russian state.
It was alleged the targets were outside the UK and that spying was carried out on behalf of
a man “known as Jan Marsalek”, who has not been charged in the case.
The defendants are Orlin Roussev, 45, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk; Bizer Dzhambazov,
41, from Harrow, north London; Katrin Ivanova, 31, also from Harrow, north London; Ivan
Stoyanov, 31, from Greenford, west London; and Vanya Gaberova, 29, from Churchway,
north-west London.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024. All rights reserved.
Roussev’s home was said by Selby to be the alleged “operating hub for the offence of
espionage”.
The five defendants are all jointly charged with conspiring to collect information intended
to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for a purpose prejudicial to the safety and
interest of the state between August 30 2020 and February 8 2023.
Roussev, Dzhambazov and Ivanova were previously charged in February 2023 with
possession of false identity documents with improper intention under section 4 of the
Identity Documents Act 2010.
The defendants spoke only to confirm their names and dates of birth.
Tanweer Ikram, deputy senior district judge at Westminster magistrates’ court, told the
five defendants that their case would now be sent to London’s Old Bailey for a hearing on
October 13.

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in Vienna MARCH 20 2023
Since 2020, European intelligence agencies have been desperately trying to assess whether
Jan Marsalek, the suave and enigmatic mastermind of the Wirecard fraud, was also an
agent of Russia’s intelligence agencies.
A formerly secret document unearthed from Austria’s state archives may now provide a
missing piece of the puzzle.
Jan Marsalek’s grandfather, Hans Marsalek — a committed anti-Nazi resistance fighter
during the second world war — was suspected by Austrian authorities of being a Russian
spy at the height of the espionage battle for geopolitical dominance in the ruins of postwar
Vienna, a dark and morally conflicted setting immortalised by Graham Greene in his novel
The Third Man.
“This is a vital piece of information,” said Thomas Riegler, an Austrian historian of
intelligence who found the document during his research, and shared a copy with the
Financial Times. “It sheds new light on Jan Marsalek and indicates that his obvious
fascination with intelligence stems from his family history.”
Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of Wirecard, was revealed by the FT in 2021 to
be under scrutiny from western intelligence agencies, who suspected him of being a
Russian spy.
Marsalek held court with a cast of known Russian intelligence operatives, bribed and
corrupted officials in Austrian intelligence and the military, and was embroiled in
outlandish projects in the Middle East, working with Russian mercenaries and attempting
to recruit militias.
Sam Jones
Jan Marsalek
Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy
Austrian authorities linked anti-Nazi ﬁghter Hans Marsalek with kidnap and torture of four people in postwar era
28.07.2024, 14:44 Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy
https://www.ft.com/content/ebbc0fab-9969-493a-815c-782085ca1651 1/6

In the wake of the Wirecard collapse, Marsalek fled his native Austria on a private jet
bound for Minsk, Belarus. His current whereabouts are unknown, but officials from two
European intelligence agencies told the FT they had high confidence that he was in
Moscow.
Hans Marsalek was the director of the Mauthausen Memorial © MKOE
Marsalek’s motivations and exact significance for Russia — and for Wirecard — remain
unclear, however.
He was a boastful and volatile figure who often flaunted his connections to the secret
world, and his activities were often geared around his own self-enrichment. Before
Wirecard’s collapse the FT received a tip that he wanted to try to co-opt FT journalists and
pass them highly classified documents containing the chemical formula for novichok, the
Russian nerve agent.
At Wirecard, he was the central figure responsible for organising the huge fraud — the
largest in German history — that underpinned the company’s rise to prominence and near
takeover of Deutsche Bank.
Much of Marsalek’s family background remains a mystery. His father left when he was a
child, and in adult life Marsalek was estranged from his mother.
Hans, his paternal grandfather, lived a long life. He died in December 2011, when Jan was
31 — one year into his role as Wirecard’s chief operating officer.

No convictions against Hans were ever brought. He died as a celebrated hero, who had,
among other things, helped Austrian police track down Nazi officials after the war.
He was a committed socialist, however, and by the 1950s, as the cold war began, Austrian
authorities had already begun, in secret, to suspect his allegiances.
A document from September 1956 lays some of them bare.
A letter from the head of Vienna’s political police to the city prosecutor and the minister of
the interior says there is an “urgent suspicion” that Hans Marsalek was a Soviet asset.
More explicitly, it says there are grounds to suspect that he was responsible for helping the
Soviets kidnap at least four people and illegally render them back to Moscow for torture,
interrogation and imprisonment. Among them was an American intelligence agent.
A letter from the head of Vienna’s political police to the city prosecutor and the minister of the interior says there is an ‘urgent suspicion’
that Hans Marsalek was a Soviet asset
“Hans was a resistance fighter who had been arrested and interned in Mauthausen
concentration camp. From 1945 on, he served as a high-ranking officer of Vienna state
police, engaged in intelligence matters. He hunted Nazi war criminals after 1945,” said
Riegler. This was a CV that put him above reproach in the eyes of many Austrians.
But, Riegler added, there were “serious suspicions against him”.
“He denied everything and he continued to serve in the police until 1963. Afterwards he
earned great merits as the director of the Mauthausen Memorial, a position he filled until
his retirement in 1976.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024. All rights reserved.
The suspicions against Hans Marsalek, Riegler pointed out, were not proof. By the 1950s,
after the Soviets had formally pulled out of eastern Austria, a backlash was under way in
the Austrian state against left-leaning officials.
Regardless, Riegler noted, as Hans Marsalek’s chequered biography makes clear, that the
secret world was undoubtedly a big presence in Jan Marsalek’s upbringing, offering a
tantalising clue as to what drove his fascination with it in later life.

Sixth person charged with
spying for Russia in UK
The ﬁve suspects previously charged are (clockwise from top le): Katrin Ivanova, Vanya Gaberova
(centre), Bizer Dzhambazov, Orlin Roussev and Ivan Stoyanov
By Daniel De Simone
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28.07.2024, 14:41 Sixth person charged with spying for Russia in UK - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68419311 1/7

BBC News
A sixth person has been charged with being part of a suspected Russian spy
ring operating in the UK.
Tihomir Ivanov Ivanchev, a 38-year-old Bulgarian national, from Acton, west
London, was arrested earlier this month and will appear in court on
Wednesday.
He is accused of "conspiring to collect information intended to be directly or
indirectly useful to an enemy".
Five other Bulgarian nationals are due to go on trial in October aer being
charged with the same offence.
Orlin Roussev, 46, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Bizer Dzhambazov 43, and
Katrin Ivanova, 32, of Harrow, north-west London, Ivan Stoyanov, 32, of
Greenford, west London, and Vanya Gaberova, 29, of Euston, London, were
arrested in February 2023.
Five alleged Russian spies appear in London court
It is alleged surveillance was carried out on people and places targeted by
Russia between August 2020 and February 2023.
The charge faced by Mr Ivanchev alleges he acted with the five other
defendants, a person named as Jan Marsalek and others unknown.
It says they"conspired... to obtain, collect, record, publish or communicate
documents or information which was calculated to be, or might be intended to
be, directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for a purpose prejudicial to the
safety and interest of the state".
Commander Dominic Murphy, from the Metropolitan Police's Counter
Terrorism Command, said Mr Ivanchev was "was identified and arrested as a
result of inquiries made following the previous five arrests in this
investigation".
Police said he was bailed aer his initial arrest on 7 February and charged on
Tuesday.
The Crown Prosecution Service said it had authorised the charge "against a
sixth person suspected of spying for Russia".
Mr Ivanchev is due to appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court on
Wednesday.
The other five accused were remanded in custody aer appearing at
Westminster Magistrates' Court in September, and a trial date has been set at
the Old Bailey.

Seaside guest house
Mr Ivanchev is listed as the owner of a London decorating business.
He is registered as having lived at the same addresses as Ms Gaberova, an
award-winning beautician, who specialised in eyelashes and ran a salon called
Pretty Woman in west London.
Mr Stoyanov, nicknamed "the Destroyer", was an amateur mixed-martial-arts
fighter appearing in contests in the UK. In Bulgaria he appeared in so-called
combat sambo fights, a form of martial arts popular in eastern Europe.
Mr Roussev previously worked in financial services. Biser Dhzambazov and
Katrin Ivanova lived as a couple and ran a community organisation for
Bulgarian citizens living in the UK.
It is alleged that the operating hub in this country for the offence of espionage
was a now-closed guesthouse in the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth
occupied by Mr Roussev.
Mr Roussev is alleged to have organised and managed the cell's spying
operations from the UK. It is alleged that such operations took place in the UK
and Europe.
The person named Jan Marsalek has not been charged in the case.
Mr Marsalek is best known as the Austrian former chief operating officer of
the company Wirecard, who became a wanted man in Germany aer being
suspected of having committed fraud. He is believed to have le Germany in
2020 and is reportedly now in Russia.
It is claimed Mr Roussev received tasking from abroad by Mr Marsalek.
Related Topics
Spying Russia London Bulgaria
More on this story

Amost wanted man: Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalekexposed asdecade long GRU spy
Roman Dobrokhotov, Christo Grozev, Michael Weiss
1 March 2 24
POLITICS
Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek wasn’t just responsible for Germany’s largest financial fraud in history. He was also a decade long Russian spy.
CONTENT
“World Domination”
1.
Blood Lust
2.
Stas, the General from GRU
3.
Marsalek's Mercenaries
4.
From Germany to Crimea
5.
The Bulgarians
6.
This is a joint investigation with Der Spiegel, ZDF, and Der Standard.
In the city of Lipetsk, 3 miles south of Moscow, stands a yellow chapel. Somewhat out of place next to a modern mirrored window building, situated
on the lip of a roundabout, the 2 year old Church of Holy Transfiguration caters to the faithful of a large mining town that dates back to the era of
Peter the Great. Inside, Father Konstantin Baiazov performs the customary rites and rituals for his flock. Dark and bearded, with a short, military style
buzz cut, the church’s archpriest’s routine is standard services twice a day. Father Konstantin inherited the job and the calling from his own
father, a revered Orthodox priest who, as local legend goes, had challenged the authority of the formidable KGB during Soviet times.
Konstantin, a father of three, used to travel abroad. He liked visiting Europe, and was particularly fond of Rome. However, he has not left Russia since
September 2 2 . Since the fifth of that month, Father Baiazov’s official passport, numbered 763391844, has not belonged to a man of God. Rather, it
belongs to someone who wears a different kind of white collar, looks a lot like him, and is the most wanted man in Europe.
For nearly four years, Austrian national Jan Marsalek has been living in Russia under the assumed identity of Konstantin Baiazov, the real life Orthodox
priest. Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of the disgraced German financial services company Wirecard, has been living in Russia under the
protection of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation GRU , a year long investigation by The Insider,
Der Spiegel, ZDF, and Standard has uncovered. Wirecard, the German equivalent to PayPal, was once a DAX 3 listed company, one of the wealthiest
traded entities on the German stock exchange, with a valuation of $28 billion. Then came June 2 2 , when, in the midst of an audit, Wirecard could not
locate €1.9 billion in assets it claimed were being held somewhere in the world Russia, the United Arab Emirates, or the Philippines. In fact, the
money didn’t exist. Wirecard’s worth was predicated on commissions supposedly earned from three companies, Al Alam, Senjo, and PayEasy, based in
Dubai, Singapore, and Manila, respectively. Wirecard money flowed into all three, but as the defunct company’s imprisoned former CEO Markus Braun
claims, it had then been funneled away into a complex web of offshore accounts controlled by his then number two, Jan Marsalek.
Marsalek, the man responsible for overseeing the forging of company records, its money laundering operations, and extensive espionage and
harassment campaigns against the journalists and speculators who exposed the enormity of Wirecard’s graft, fled in a sinuous route from Germany to
Russia via Austria and Belarus on June 19, 2 2 , at a moment when COVID 19 lockdowns made movement across borders more difficult than usual for
ordinary citizens. But Marsalek is not only an internationally accused swindler. He is also an agent of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, and
he has been for the last decade. More recently, since his defection to Russia, he has also done jobs for the FSB.
The Insider’s investigation is based mainly on confidential documents, emails, and chat transcripts, as well mobile phone and travel data. Research into
Marsalek’s past also included interviews conducted by our consortium partners with people close to the accused. Among these are his mother and his
longtime recruiter handler, whom Der Spiegel met up with in February at a five star hotel in Dubai.
The never before told story of how the Austrian born “whiz kid” was recruited to Russia’s largest and most notorious spy agency, the GRU, bears all
the hallmarks of a genre bending ham thriller. Sacha Baron Cohen as Bernie Madoff the Bond villain. It is a saga replete with honey traps, MiG fighter
jets, erotic models, sinister ex spooks, even more sinister mercenaries, counterfeit passports, fake priests taking Syphilis tests, and cheap disguises.
More ominously, the story also involves surveillance and kidnapping plots, including surveillance targeting a member of the team that investigated
Marsalek’s case, Christo Grozev.
“World Domination”
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28.07.2024, 14:40 A most wanted man: Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek exposed as decade-long GRU spy
https://theins.ru/en/politics/269612 1/15

Born in Vienna on March 15, 198 , and raised in the nearby suburb of Klosterneuburg, Jan Marsalek was, in the recollections of his mother, a
“presumptuous show off.” Marsalek’s father was a Czech factory worker who eventually became managing director of a company in the newly
independent Czech Republic “a small man with small ideas,” in the words of his eldest son. Marsalek’s parents divorced when he was a teenager, and
he would remain estranged from his family from that point on.
Childhood photos of Jan Marsalek
Growing up, everyone who knew him recalls, the young Marsalek had two principal talents: he could talk, and he could charm. “A sales genius, a
catcher of people,” says a former friend. Even at an early age, Marsalek seemed to be mugging for the cameras, an international man of mystery in
development. One photo from his boyhood shows him in a gray trench coat and oversized floppy hat the secret agent as envisaged by Titin. He was
tall, around 5’11, slim and fond of martial arts, always with a close cropped haircut. He was educated at Vienna’s Lycée Français, and by the time he
left, Marsalek could speak several languages, including computer code. Clearly, his outsized ambitions matched his capacity for persuading others to
facilitate his realization of them.
Wirecard was founded in 1999 in Munich at the height of the dotcom boom as a credit card payment processor for online vendors. Then as now, the
internet’s truly big business came from revenues connected to gambling and pornography, paid for by Visa and Mastercard customers whose
“discretely charged” debits Wirecard was all too happy to transact for a commission. And if that eventually meant miscategorizing transactions for
newly proscribed online gambling sites, so what?
The CEO of the company was Markus Braun, a former KPMG consultant from a middle class family in Vienna. Braun modeled his appearance on Steve
Jobs, always wearing a black turtleneck and wire frame eyeglasses, even if the tech visionary look was undercut by the clashing black sports jacket
Braun insisted on wearing as part of the outfit. With his alleged PhD in social and economic sciences, Doktor Braun wanted to be taken seriously by
the Central European financial elite, but he lacked the charisma and ostentatiousness necessary to sell an emerging tech company.
Enter Marsalek. Braun recruited him from a two man startup to Wirecard a year after its formation, on Marsalek’s 2 th birthday. Even though he held
no university degree, the “whiz kid” was immediately branded the company’s chief technology officer.
His first major act was a major screw up, albeit a characteristically self interested one. Marsalek unwisely “routed all of the company’s internet traffic
through his own PC, rather than the dedicated hardware in the server room a set up ideal for snooping,” writes Financial Times reporter Dan
McCrum, author of the 2 22 book Money Men, which chronicles the rise and fall of Wirecard along with the reporter’s own role as the target of a well
financed vilification campaign .
A favorite word of Marsalek’s was “brilliant,” which he’d use to describe things that impressed or amused him, very often because they involved some
form of corner cutting if not outright con artistry. Marsalek’s icon in business was a fellow Austrian, Dietrich Mateschitz, the creator and promoter of
the energy drink Red Bull, which outsourced production and distribution to others while keeping the profits for itself. Marsalek seemed fond of
generating money on the back of a highly touted idea without any tangible product undergirding it, a real life Joe MacMillan, the fast talking,
overpromising Silicon Valley guru in the TV series Halt and Catch Fire. But whereas the fictional MacMillan was an incorrigible idealist who serially
failed in his poorly executed revolutions in personal computing, the all too real Marsalek reveled in being a hollow man. A new software for more
secure payment processing? He spent months talking it up, and getting the Wirecard sales team to do likewise, with nothing but scraps of nonsense
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code to show for it. Any other company might have gone under. Instead, Wirecard ballooned, relentlessly acquiring subsidiaries and subcontractors,
including prepaid card concerns and smaller payment processing outfits overseas.
In most cases, the paper trails led nowhere or, more specifically, they led to shell companies whose nominal directors worked out of slapdash offices
atop fast food joints in Bahrain, or that consisted of the unsuspecting local population of an impoverished former steel town in Consett, County
Durham, England, where residents were compensated fifty quid for every company they registered. One Wirecard partner was in fact a Filipino family,
doorstepped at their villa three hours’ drive north of Manila while in the middle of grooming their poodle with clippers.
The entire empire ran on a Ponzi scheme dedicated to moving money from one Wirecard account into another a process euphemistically called
“round tripping” and raising ever more cash from deceived shareholders taken in by the smoke and mirrors. More impressive was how Wirecard
dealt with critics: the hedge fund analysts and short sellers and financial journalists who were onto its fraud and who, thanks to Marsalek’s silky
evasions and dirty tricks, were for years cast as the real criminals in the company’s saga. Wirecard hired goons and snoops who spied on and hacked
its enemies, which included the FT’s McCrum, who himself became the target of a German financial regulatory investigation thanks to lies told by the
company. Marsalek’s money launderers exploited Germany’s sterling reputation for commercial probity and Berlin’s defensiveness about its prized
Bavarian asset to boost Wirecard’s market capitalization. All the while, Marsalek enjoyed the high life, zipping around the world on a private jet,
entertaining associates and casual acquaintances, dropping a grand a pop on bottles of Château Haut Brion or €15, on dinner at the Mandarin
Oriental.
Until June 2 22, when the whole thing came crashing down thanks in no small part to forensic accountants at KPMG, Wirecard CEO Markus Braun’s
former employer. They realized, in the words of Dan McCrum, that Wirecard’s “core European payment processing operations made no profit at all.”
“The problem with us Austrians,” Marsalek liked to quip around the office, “is we always want world domination.”
Blood Lust
Natalia Zlobina, Marsalek’s girlfriend, who introduces him to GRU recruiter Stanislav Petlinsky.
Taking over the world usually involves conquering Moscow. Braun’s relationship with the great and the not so good of the Austrian establishment
opened that door.
Florian Stermann was the chairman of the Russian Austrian Friendship Society and a fixer for the right wing populist Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ .
Thanks to Stermann, Wirecard had entered into negotiations for the provision of wireless payment technology with three Russian mobile operators.
One of these projects was a joint venture with the mobile giant Megafon to provide NFC payment services to the Moscow Metro, a sprawling subway
system that serves more than seven million passengers daily. That one was delegated to Marsalek. But by 2 13, the project with Megafon had come to
a halt as negotiations with the city owned subway operator stalled after Megafon began pursuing the development of an in house solution for NFC
payments. Other attempts to offer Wirecard’s payment technology to Russian counterparts also failed, either because Wirecard’s solutions were too
expensive or due to delays on the German side.
The Megafon failure wasn’t Marsalek’s first in Russia. Beginning in July 2 1 , not long after he was elevated from chief geek to chief operating officer
at Wirecard, Marsalek began traveling to the country, sometimes making as many as four trips a month. In the space of the next decade, he would visit
Russia more than sixty times, with the highest concentration of visits occurring between 2 13 and 2 16 exactly when Wirecard’s attempts to export
their business eastward were coming to dust.
This was because Marsalek had found new dissipations in Russia, one of them in the form of a tall blonde putative deal saver named Natalia Zlobina.
Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the then 29 year old Zlobina was already an advertising executive. However, she was more recognizable from her
previous career in erotic modeling and B movie acting, where her best known feature was Red Lips 2 Blood Lust, a sexy schlocky vampire flick in
which the thirteen year old Zlobina plays a Russian secret agent who kills her victims using a nerve agent.
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In a fitting turn of life imitating art, Zlobina became a Russian spy.
When she met Marsalek, Zlobina claimed to have an investor who could set up an entity for Wirecard to do business with in Russia. In August 2 13, she
even incorporated a company called ByteMax Ltd. as a payment facilitation start up intended to be the German giant’s main Russian partner. She was
one of two shareholders, the other being a business partner of Dimitri Pyankovski, who was Moscow’s head of electronic payment services.
Everything seemed poised for success.
Email correspondence and travel records reviewed by The Insider and Der Spiegel show that, over the ensuing years, Marsalek and Zlobina’s
relationship became an intertwined mix of business and personal pursuits. Despite Zlobina’s connections in Moscow, the professional side didn’t go so
well for Wirecard. ByteMax ran up a large bill to Marsalek’s company that it didn’t have the funds to repay. But Marsalek hardly minded. His emails to
Zlobina show he’d taken to coaching her on how and to whom at Wirecard she should address her requests for extensions to the payment deadlines.
The dues were never repaid. ByteMax was wound down.
At the same time, the personal relationship between Marsalek and his protege blossomed. The two traveled both together and separately in Russia
and abroad, with Wirecard fronting the costs for some of the trips. Emails show Marsalek’s personal assistant booking travel for Zlobina to Barcelona
in March 2 15; she stayed at a €695 a night hotel. Marsalek would sometimes fly into Russia on his private jet just to pick up Zlobina and then fly on to
the Greek island of Santorini for a weekend getaway. They were more than associates; they were lovers.
And they liked it rough. Marsalek was drawn to BDSM, and so was Natalia. They were also drawn to others for whom violence was less a leisure
activity than a means of retaining political power.
Travel records show that Marsalek and Zlobina traveled in September 2 13 to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Witnesses have told Der Spiegel the
purpose of the unlikely tourist trip was to meet the family of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Putin installed strongman president of the Russian republic.
Kadyrov’s clan had a few hundred million squirreled away in banks in Hong Kong, and they needed a way to move it to Europe without arousing any
suspicions. According to Zlobina, by then au fait with Wirecard’s global network of matryoshka companies and their dummy deposits, Marsalek was
the Kadyrov clan’s man for the job. According to witnesses, two additional meetings between Marsalek and the Kadyrov family were arranged one in
Vienna and another in Asia, the site of the dirty money. On the Chechen side in Vienna was the silver haired Akhmed Pakaev, who claimed to be a
major from the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service and one of the successors to the Soviet era KGB. Leaked Russian bank credit records examined
by The Insider show Pakaev had previously served as a Russian representative to Interpol.
In January 2 14, Marsalek jetted Zlobina to Kyiv at the very moment when the Ukrainian capital was mired in a protest movement against its pro
Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, who at Putin’s prompting and financial encouragement had reneged on a campaign promise to sign an
association agreement with the European Union. By the time the power couple arrived, the Euromaidan movement was already under physical threat
from officers of the Yanukovych loyal Berkut riot police and plain clothes hired thugs called titushki. The anti revolutionary activities were being
orchestrated by the FSB’s Fifth Service, the Russian organization’s foreign intelligence arm. In Kyiv, Marsalek and Zlobina again met with Pakaev, who
had arrived in Ukraine in November at the start of Euromaidan for purposes that can only be guessed at.
Leaked emails show that Pakaev introduced Marsalek to Konstantin Torop, the self styled director of the International Police Corporation for Public
Security, a non government militia that has reportedly been investigated by Interpol over accusations that it was impersonating a public police body.
In one letter to Marsalek, who used an email account that itself spoofed a state official from Grenada jan.marsalek stateofgrenada.org , Torop
informed him that, on Pakaev’s recommendation, Marsalek had been issued a membership ID from the “police” club.
Marsalek and Zlobina continued to travel, and not only to earthly destinations. In May 2 16, Zlobina booked her boyfriend on a flight into the
stratosphere aboard a Russian MiG fighter jet. But while images of the lovebirds on their adrenaline filled extreme romantic getaways were known to
Russian social and business elites at the time, the affair remained a mystery to all but a few employees at Wirecard. Back in Munich, Marsalek was
involved in a steady, long term relationship with Viola, his German girlfriend and eventual fiancée. The COO even boasted to his Russian friends that
he’d relocated Viola to Hamburg, making it easier for Zlobina to visit him in Munich without any worry she might bump into her rival.
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At the top, Natalia Zlobina and Jan Marsalek pictured together. On the bottom, Natalia and Jan on the board of the Russian MiG fighter jet in May 2 16.
Jan and Natasha were also busy outside of the bedroom.
While Wirecard’s entry into the Russian market foundered, Marsalek and Zlobina launched at least one joint enterprise together, a cryptocurrency
mining farm located in the far northeastern region of Yakutia, Russia. The three megawatt farm, called Atlas Mine, was built with equipment purchased
by Marsalek through offshore accounts using a UK intermediary. The project followed Marsalek’s tried and true method of revenue generation: a
pyramid scheme in which for the low, low price of $1 , investors were guaranteed enormous returns within the space of six months and continuing
payouts in perpetuity. The prospectus for Atlas Mine’s initial coin offering ICO also referred to a previous project by the same operator, this one based
in China. A YouTube video uploaded in May 2 18 shows the installation process and “operational” phase of what appears to be a large crypto mining
farm. It is not known how many, if any, investors the ICO project attracted. Its website has been defunct since at least 2 21.
It is also unknown whether Zlobina’s work for the Russian security services preceded or followed her personal and professional involvement with
Marsalek, but in any case, she certainly enjoyed the kinds of unusual state protections typically associated with Russian intelligence operatives. For
instance, her passport dossier something usually obtainable through the transparent Russian personal data trading market on the dark web was
replaced by another woman’s file when The Insider attempted to acquire it. Subsequent attempts to retrieve the file were returned with a “missing
person” notification. Likewise, all of Zlobina’s travel records for the two years after Marsalek fled to Russia have been purged from the comprehensive
Russian database, Magistral, presumably in order to prevent anyone from tracing the Austrian fugitive’s movements by using his girlfriend as a proxy.
Data for Vadim Krasikov, the FSB hitman who fatally gunned down Georgian intelligence asset Zelinkham Khangoshvili in Berlin’s Tiergarten park in
August 2 19, was similarly removed from the Russian system. Krasikov, convicted in 2 21, is currently serving a life sentence in a German prison.
Stas, the General from GRU
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Jan Marsalek and Stanislav Petlinsky celebrating Petlinsky’s birthday at the Munich restaurant "Tantris".
On July 6, 2 14, Zlobina turned 3 . It was also the day Marsalek met his GRU handler.
Zlobina was waiting for her beau aboard a dingy Greek flagged cutter, “Poseidon III,” in the Mediterranean waters off the coast of Nice. Marsalek
arrived with a second man, who was carrying his suitcase. Marsalek climbed down a ladder into the vessel and gave Zlobina a perfunctory peck on the
cheek. He was clearly angry, which was the point of this vignette, captured on marina security camera footage retrieved by Der Spiegel. The Poseidon
III was a ruse, Natasha’s joke.
Zlobina’s birthday gift to Marsalek or maybe to herself was an introduction aboard the yacht to a man named Stanislav Petlinsky. Zlobina
introduced Marsalek to Petlinsky as “Stas, the General from GRU.” At the time, Petlinsky was dating Zlobina’s best friend, and she promised Marsalek
that “Stas” would be a terrific addition to his thickening rolodex of influential Russian contacts.
So he would.
In the 9 s, Petlinsky had been a supervising officer in the GRU Spetsnaz, or special forces, and fought in Chechnya. He spent that floating evening with
Marsalek regaling him with his exploits particularly as a marksman, as Marsalek expressed an interest in guns. Petlinsky’s exact rank and role in
Russian intelligence hinted at by the man himself to an intimate circle of contacts, either in truth or as provocatively sprinkled bits of disinformation
aimed at burnishing his legend is murky, but Western spy agencies do not doubt that his employer is the Russian state.
Among those Petlinsky has regaled is a reporter from Der Spiegel. That conversation occurred mere weeks ago at the Jumeirah al Naseem beach
resort in Dubai amid a plentiful selection of champagne, Beluga caviar, and young Russian women.
Petlinsky is found sitting on the terrace overlooking the Persian Gulf. Not far from him is another Russian, Alexander Lebedev, the ex KGB officer
turned oligarch and publishing magnate who controls Britain’s Independent and Evening Standard newspapers. The two clearly know each other and
nod a silent greeting.
Trim at 6 , dressed in a gray pinstripe, black tee, and mirrored aviator sunglasses, Petlinsky confirms meeting Marsalek aboard the yacht in Nice in
July 2 14. “You know, I fell in love with him from the first moment,” he said. “He has such a beautiful mind. I always think so small, in dimensions of
what’s possible,” Petlinsky continues, echoing Marsalek’s animadversions about his own father. “Jan always thinks big, very, very big.” Being chancellor
of Germany? Too small for Marsalek. “But uniting China, Russia, and Europe as a counterbalance to the USA? That would interest him.”
Fancy toys and women aren’t Marsalek’s motivation, Petlinsky insists before describing the Austrian’s “beautiful mind” as being “a bit autistic.” While
Marsalek’s acquaintances almost universally define him with the word “charisma,” Petlinsky says Marsalek’s weak point is dealing with people. “He
lacks empathy,” the Russian spy says, not noting that the trait he describes is a telltale sign of the sociopath.
What about Marsalek’s espionage and Petlinsky’s role in it? The Austrian is just playacting at spy games, Petlinsky maintains, inhabiting a theatrical
role with no real world legitimacy to it. Marsalek is “obsessed” with spycraft and all its mystique, something others also attest to. As for Petlinsky
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himself, he swears he’s merely a “security advisor” with a big portfolio in Africa, the kind of man who sometimes meets with Putin and chases down
FSB agents. He offers a robust critique of the amateurish nature of the Khangoshvili assassination in Berlin no small thing given that Putin has
recently praised the killer Krasikov as a “patriot” in a much discussed sit down interview with Tucker Carlson. Petlinsky admits to introducing Marsalek
to a host of colorful characters in Russia. He doesn’t want to talk about which ones were Russian intelligence officers, and he changes the subject.
But to his close circle of friends, Der Spiegel has learned, Petlinsky boasted about handing Marsalek off to the GRU after that first meeting in the South
of France in 2 14. Friends of Marsalek say the Wirecard fraudster’s life can be divided in two halves: “before Stas” and “after Stas.”
They traveled together, often as a trio, with Zlobina in tow. One such trip was to Tunisia via private jet from Moscow in March 2 16. The next month,
they returned to Nice, the scene of Marsalek and Petlinsky’s meet cute recruitment; then it was on to Tel Aviv. Stas pulled plenty of strings, as Russian
border records demonstrate that much of his foreign travel is designated as “official visit to a diplomatic mission,” a category typically reserved for
Russian Foreign Ministry officials.
The relationship was so close that, at one point, Petlinsky even told friends that he relocated his own mother, who suffered from health problems, to a
clinic in Munich just to be closer to Marsalek, who built himself his own back office for Wirecard and other pursuits in a villa at Prinzregentenstraße 61,
right in the center of the Bavarian capital. Johanna Singer, an employee of Wirecard name has been changed on her request , recalled meeting
Petlinsky at the gourmet Munich restaurant Tantris, where the GRU officer celebrated one of his birthdays with Marsalek, complete with a cake
shaped in uncanny resemblance to the Soviet red star. One of the toniest areas of Munich, the high ceilinged, white columned digs cost €68 , per
year in rent, all paid for, of course, by Wirecard via its manifold holdings. A germaphobe in the mold of Donald Trump the Wirecard executive somehow
unsurprisingly owns a life sized cut out of the 45th U.S. President , Marsalek even had a field hospital built in the villa during the pandemic. The back
office was conveniently situated directly across from the Russian consulate in Bavaria.
Marsalek's Mercenaries
Stas was also a connector.
A proud owner of a Harley Davidson himself, he introduced Marsalek to a heavy set man fond of Hells Angels attire, whom Petlinsky referred to as
“Vladimir, my mercenary.” Vladimir’s actual name is Anatoliy Karaziy. Like Petlinsky, Karaziy is a former GRU Spetsnaz officer, and the two are thought
to have served together in Chechnya. At the very least, the mercenary part of the story proved true, as Karaziy belonged to a guns for hire outfit that
gained in infamy after its debut on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine in 2 14. It was called the Wagner Group, and it was founded by catering magnate
and ex con Yevgeny Prigozhin, a personal friend of Putin’s from their native St. Petersburg.
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Karaziy second from right in Chechnya circa 1996, and more recently at a gun show in Moscow.
By 2 17, Karaziy was the head of Wagner’s intelligence service. Travel data examined by The Insider confirms that on May 5, 2 17, Karaziy flew from
Moscow to Munich to meet with Petlinsky and Marsalek. From there, the three men flew to Beirut and then took a car into war torn Syria, visiting the
ancient city of Palmyra, which Russian forces backed by Wagner had recently captured from the terrorist group ISIS. The three men remained in
Palmyra for a week, with Marsalek dressed as a soldier in aviator headgear, a flak jacket, and combat helmet witnesses told Der Spiegel that Marsalek
initially showed up dressed in brand new state of the art camouflage garb and military gear a “shiny object in the desert” that would have attracted
enemy fire within seconds; he was quickly given standard Russian attire to change into . He’s alleged to have shot live rounds at Islamist militants.
In Dubai Petlinsky suggested the rounds had come from a rocket launcher, and that Marsalek had even been given a tutorial in how to position himself
properly in order to fire it. The visit to Syria, Petlinsky says, was “a dream of Jan’s that I made come true… Jan imagined a helicopter flight and loud
music and Ray Ban sunglasses. Of course, that didn’t happen. Too dangerous.”
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Another high flying Russian to whom Petlinsky introduced Marsalek was Andrey Chuprygin, also a former GRU officer a colonel who worked for
Petlinsky’s Center for Eastern Civilization Studies. Chuprygin was an academic, too, with a teaching job in African studies at the Moscow School of
Economics. He also served as an adviser on Libya to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, a title Petlinsky even arranged for Marsalek to acquire.
Marsalek’s interest in Libya wasn’t confined to ego gratifying honorifics from the Russian government. Upon his return from Syria, Petlinsky
persuaded him to invest in the North African country, which was still reeling from the brutal civil war that ended Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s three
decades of iron fisted rule. Someone recommended Marsalek buy cement factories, without which postwar Libyan reconstruction would be
impossible. And he did. But as usual, Marsalek was thinking bigger.
In June 2 17, Marsalek arranged to meet an Austrian UN worker named Kilian Kleinschmidt at the popular Munich cafe Käfer Schänke. Kleinschmidt
had decades of experience helping refugees get out of hot spots and, persuaded by Marsalek’s apparent concern for Libya’s wretched of the earth, he
agreed to accept €2 , to conduct a study on rebuilding the country. The invoice, Marsalek told Kleinschmidt, was to be sent to the Russian
Libyan Cultural Institute in Moscow. That should have been an immediate red flag. It was also bait.
At a second meeting, at Marsalek’s Prinzregentenstraße back office, Kleinschmidt was horrified to discover the Wirecard exec’s real intention: to train
up a private army of 15, to 2 , Libyan mercenaries who would be put in charge of guarding the country’s southern border and restricting
migration flows at gunpoint the opposite of Kleinschmidt’s life work. Marsalek even giddily recounted how mercenaries could be outfitted with
state of the art body cams to record “awesome video material” of them shooting people, which could be streamed live to the internet. Stas had told
him all about how Wagner was using this technology already, the only hiccup being that the footage couldn’t be used for marketing purposes since
Wagner had a habit of executing all of its POWs. Still, Marsalek and his “lack of empathy” wanted a brand all his own. Kleinschmidt could not escape the
meeting fast enough.
The experienced UN worker was no longer an option, but Petlinsky had an alternative solution. Marsalek should enlist the services of a Russian private
security company whose owner, Oleg Krinytsin, was also a Petlinsky acquaintance. Krinytsin’s outfit was RSB Group, one of Russia’s oldest PMCs, with
international experience in Somalia, South Africa, Egypt, and Sri Lanka. Among its stated achievements were counter terrorism operations and anti
piracy protection for marine vessels, a task that involved the use of non lethal acoustic sound cannons.
Marsalek again had wider eyes than did his case officer. He didn’t just want to hire RSB Group; he wanted to buy it outright. Not only would he use it to
clean up the cement company, he would have his private army on the ground in a strategic country in Northern Africa. Petlinsky negotiated a
purchase price for RSB Group with Krinytsin. The deal was for Krinytsin to remain nominally as the public facing owner, but to hand over the levers of
control to Marsalek and Petlinsky.
The purchase price was paid in cash, which Marsalek provided to Stas in tranches of several hundred thousand dollars shuttled on his private jet from
Munich to Moscow. The formal ownership of the original Russian company called RSB Group remained unchanged; however, its business was de facto
moved to two new companies: a newly formed Russian entity with the identical name, OOO RSB Group, and an Isle of Man registered offshore firm
called RSB Group Ltd.
The Russian company was wholly owned by Kirill Korobeynikov, Petlinsky’s son. The Cayman Island firm, which had a contract with the Libyan Cement
Company, was owned 25% by Korobeynikov, and 25% by Victoria Bowman, the Russian wife of Marsalek’s long standing business partner Joe
Bowman. The remaining 5 % was owned in proxy by a Swiss lawyer, Richard Cedric Harry Ritter.
The integration of Marsalek’s personal and professional lives with Petlinsky’s followed much the same trajectory that Marsalek’s development under
Zlobina had. By 2 17, both of Petlinsky’s sons were fully mobbed up in Wirecard’s off books and illegal operations. Korobeynikov, The Insider has
learned, supervised a group of hackers for Wirecard. Their target list included the short sellers out to prove the company’s stated value was pure
fiction, along with McCrum and other journalists at the FT who were looking to report the same. The email address Korobeynikov used for several
Russian e gov services was FTraid gmail.com.
Petlinsky’s other son, Allen Petlinsky, an attorney based in Israel, acted in a legal capacity in mergers and acquisitions on behalf of Wirecard,
Marsaleks’s email correspondence further shows.
Marsalek and Petlinsky in Syria
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Spies ‘R’ Us
All of this took place as Wirecard’s stock market value skyrocketed and as Marsalek’s willingness to rely on intelligence operatives to help furnish the
propellent grew bolder and more reckless.
One of his hirelings was Rami El Obeidi, the former head of foreign intelligence for Libya's post Gaddafi transitional government. A lover of Italian haute
couture and expensive vintages, El Obeidi helped spy on Wirecard detractors and even concocted a doctored sting operation to suggest that the FT
was conniving with short sellers to sink the company an allegation German regulators took seriously enough that they opened criminal
investigations against McCrum and his colleagues.
Germany's financial regulator, BaFin, is notably supervised by the Federal Ministry of Finance, which at the time of Wirecard's collapse was headed by
current Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Two other accomplices to Marsalek’s cloak and dagger sideline were recently retired officials from Austria’s domestic security service, the BVT,
officially known as the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight against Terrorism. The agency was disbanded in 2 21 after it
failed to stop an Islamist terror attack in Vienna that killed four and injured 23.
Until 2 17, Martin Weiss was the head of BVT’s Department II, which was in charge of intelligence gathering and investigations. Weiss had therefore
had access to all relevant classified information collected by BVT or given to it by allied foreign services. Marsalek hired Weiss as a “consultant” in 2 18,
using his extensive network of agents and informants in the West to gather information on anyone Marsalek or Wirecard needed to know about,
including journalists in Europe. Weiss brought on one of his former deputies at BVT, Egisto Ott, who was suspended from the service in 2 17 on the
suspicion that he was transmitting information to Moscow. Ott ran background checks for Marsalek.
Egisto Ott
Weiss was arrested and interrogated after Wirecard’s implosion and Marsalek’s disappearance from Europe. Austrian investigators found that he and
Marsalek were part of an “intelligence cell whose capacities and capabilities were used by Russian intelligence services.” He currently resides in Dubai.
Ott was detained but released from pre trial detention in the spring of 2 21. In a brief interview with Der Spiegel, which met up with him at his home in
Carinthia, Austria, in the Eastern Alps, Ott denied he was any kind of Russian spy. However, text messages examined by The Insider show Ott asking a
police officer in Italy for help in understanding why the mistress of Russian oligarch Arkady Rotenberg and her sister were having difficulty crossing
borders. The answer came back: they’d both been flagged in the European border surveillance system SIS.
By this point, Wirecard’s client list included Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, giving Marsalek and the Russian intelligence services access
to sensitive data about German law enforcement’s slate of confidential informants. Marsalek even received a confidential report prepared by the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW about the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England in 2 18. Sergei
Skripal, a GRU defector to British intelligence, was targeted for liquidation by members of the GRU’s assassination and sabotage team, Unit 29155, and
the highly restricted document Marsalek had in his possession contained the chemical formula for the toxin used: Novichok, a Russian military grade
nerve agent. Marsalek received the report from Johannes Peterlik, the former Secretary General in the Austrian Foreign Ministry. A video of the
document was even recorded on Ott’s cell phone on October 5, 2 18. Of course, the GRU could have gotten its hands on this material through more
above board means. Russia, after all, is a party to the OPCW and thus would have been privy to the Novichok report, even if it implicated Russian spies
in the failed murder attempt.
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Not that Marsalek didn’t earn his keep in other ways. In 2 19, he instructed his underlings at Wirecard to compile a database of customers from major
international companies, purportedly for use by Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, the country’s equivalent to the CIA. Only the BND
never commissioned any such project, raising the immediate question as to who did.
As Petlinsky’s intelligence apparatus grew thanks in large part to his Austrian asset Wirecard’s bid to take over the world appeared unstoppable. In
2 18, the company joined the DAX, meaning it had become one of the 3 most valuable companies in Germany. At one point, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel even brought up Wirecard’s €1 9 million purchase of Allscore, a Beijing based payments company, in a meeting with Chinese President
Xi Jinping. Given that Wirecard wasn’t just a financial services giant, but also a bank the “daughter,” as CEO Markus Braun awkwardly put it, of the
original business its only serious competitors in Germany were Commerzbank, which it had displaced on the DAX, and Deutsche Bank. In June 2 2 ,
as allegations of widespread stock manipulation, book cooking if not wholesale book inventing , and money laundering continued to bedevil
Wirecard’s shareholder confidence, the company nevertheless launched a quixotic plan to buy Deutsche Bank. The scheme was described by Braun
as both a reputation salvaging PR move and a potential means of keeping Wirecard’s top management out of prison, as the company’s funny money
could be confusedly mixed in with Deutsche Bank’s legitimate revenue.
That same month, Wirecard had to confess that it couldn’t account for the missing billions reported in its accounts. Braun resigned as CEO and was
arrested later that year on charges of market manipulation and embezzlement, with gang fraud added to his rap sheet in 2 22. Marsalek was placed
on leave, but he had no intention of following his boss into a jail cell.
On June 18, 2 2 , Marsalek met Weiss at an Italian restaurant in Munich to plot his escape from Germany. The plan was to fly from the Bad Vöslau
airfield 2 miles south of Vienna. Marsalek boarded a small private jet, paying the pilots €8, . To throw his German pursuers off his trail, Marsalek
even got sources in the Philippines to falsely suggest his plane had landed there. In reality, as The Insider and Bellingcat pieced together in 2 2 ,
Marsalek’s destination was Moscow, where he arrived via Minsk.
Based on leaked travel data and emails, it can now be revealed that Petlinsky, Marsalek’s GRU handler, was the lynchpin of the exfiltration.
From Germany to Crimea
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At top, Jan Marsalek. At bottom, the man whose identity he has assumed in Russia, Orthodox priest Konstanin Baiazov.
Petlinsky had a plane at Bad Vöslau initially booked in the name of David Iakobashvili, a Georgian billionaire with formerly close ties to the Russian
government. Iakobashvili, who co owns a Russian wholesale distributor called PI OO with Petlinsky, resides mainly in Monaco. A copy of Iakobashvili’s
passport was supplied to the private jet operator, though Iakobashvili told The Insider he wasn’t aware of his passport being used to ferry a fugitive
out of Europe.
On the day of the flight from Austria to Belarus, Petlinsky called an Israeli flight logistics company named RS LS Ltd. What role RS LS played in the
extraction is unclear, but Petlinsky’s communication with the company continued, phone traffic metadata shows. RS LS Ltd is now a subcontractor of
the U.S. Department of Defense.
Marsalek crossed from Belarus into Russia by car the day after his arrival, and his border crossing was organized by Lev Dengov, a Belarusian Russian
dual national who happened to serve as Putin’s special envoy to Libya.
On September 5, 2 2 , Evgeniya Kurochkina, an employee of Marsalek’s Russian mercenary outfit RSB Group and a woman with a professional history
full of FSB links, accompanied the suspended Wirecard COO to the migration office in Moscow to receive his brand new passport. The name he was
told he would use was that of Konstanin Baiazov, the Orthodox priest from Lipetsk. Kurochkina left her own phone number and email address as the
contact information for “Baiazov.”
According to data connected with Kurochkina’s cell phone, on September 6 she rode in a minibus toward Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Russia
illegally occupied not long after Marsalek and Zlobina’s first joint trip to Kyiv. Petlinsky and Marsalek flew to Crimea in parallel in a private jet. Marsalek
would have had to use his new passport, issued in Baiazov’s name but bearing his own photograph, when boarding the flight.
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Jan Marsalek's Russian passport.
By nightfall on September 8, Kurochkina’s phone logged in at Sevastopol, Crimea, the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The following morning,
she ordered taxis and toured hotels along the southern coast of the peninsula. Petlinsky, travel data shows, chartered a private jet from Simferopol,
the provincial capital of Crimea, to Moscow on September 12 only Petlinsky wasn’t on the plane. He couldn’t get on the chartered jet because he
could not bring his gun on board, and he had to reschedule for a flight with a more understanding charter company the following morning.
Petlinsky told Der Spiegel that he was indeed in Crimea around that time but had nothing to do with Marsalek’s escape. He also said he had not
communicated directly with Marsalek since the early days of his move to Russia.
This latter claim, however, is belied by new evidence The Insider has obtained namely, the results of a blood test.
In January 2 21, a mysterious man by the name of Alexandr Schmidt summoned a nurse from the Russian lab franchise Gemotest to a posh penthouse
in a luxury Moscow high rise. Schmidt asked to have his blood drawn and analyzed. The apartment in fact belonged to Petlinsky, who now goes by his
new legal name, “Boris Grin.”“Alexandr Schmidt” does not exist. It is an alias used by Marsalek to travel on a forged French passport, intelligence
officials from two European countries told The Insider. The passport number given by “Schmidt” to the nurse a requirement under Russian law
belongs to Ekaterina Kulikova, a long time aide and friend of Petlinsky’s.
Just a month later, on February 28, 2 21, another mysterious figure had his blood taken at the same luxury apartment. This time, two of the tests were
for HIV and syphilis. The subject went by the name of “Vitaly Malkin” and was approximately the same age as Jan Marsalek. The real Malkin, like the
real Baiazov, is a small town priest from the Russian town of Vladimir.
Just before the syphilis screening, Malkin reported that his passport had been stolen and arranged to receive a new one. It was the old, lost passport
that “Vitaly Markin” used for the blood test. Marsalek used the passport a second time, a year later, in February 2 22. A nurse visited him at the same
posh apartment in Moscow owned by Petlinsky.
The real Vitaly Malkin told The Insider that he did not know Petlinsky and certainly had never tested himself for syphilis. The fake Malkin provided
enough blood measurements to allow The Insider to compare certain metrics to those of “Alexandr Schmidt.” The probability that the two men are the
same is overwhelming. It appears that Vitaliy Malkin is another man of the cloth whose identity Marsalek has usurped with the help of the Russian
security services.
Zlobina would not comment for this story. Father Baiazov the real one cryptically said that he couldn’t answer any questions about why his
passport now belonged to another man, one on Interpol’s most wanted list. “Why do you refuse to understand that I cannot answer this question ?” he
told Der Spiegel.
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Orthodox priest Konstantin Baiazov.
The Bulgarians
The competition for Marsalek’s most audacious plot is fierce, but he really might have saved the best for last.
Between August 3 , 2 2 and February 8, 2 23, Marsalek, the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service found, “conspired... to obtain, collect, record, publish
or communicate documents or information which was calculated to be, or might be intended to be, directly or indirectly useful to an enemy for a
purpose prejudicial to the safety and interest of the state.” The defendants in this case are a ring of Bulgarian nationals, five of whom were arrested in
London in February 2 23 on allegations of espionage. Leaving aside the central casting aspects of some of their biographies one is an amateur
mixed martial arts fighter nicknamed “the Destroyer” they certainly behaved like spies. MI5, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI, had been surveilling the
Bulgarians’ activities for a while, gathering passport data, evidence of international travel, and 8 , chat messages, which included tasks assigned
to them by Marsalek via his preferred mode of communication, the Telegram messenger app.
His years working on the Atlas Mine pyramid scheme were evidently not wasted, as Marsalek was compensating his agent network in cryptocurrency,
along with cash delivered via a courier. Also in the possession of these Bulgarians were forged documents used for their legend, or cover stories: press
badges and apparel with Discovery Channel and National Geographic logos emblazoned on them. After years of spying on and intimidating journalists,
Marsalek had decided to use pretend journalists as snoops in the U.K. One of them, the presumed ringleader of the network, was Orlin Roussev, a 46
year old surveillance expert who had known Marsalek since Wirecard was flush. A sixth Marsalek agent, Tihomir Ivanov Ivanchev, 36, listed in London
as an interior decorator, was arrested on February 28, 2 24, just as this story was being finalized. He had spied on targets for the Russian government,
under Marsalek’s direct instruction, in Montenegro and in Austria.
Around the time the spy ring was being rounded up in the U.K., Christo Grozev, the Bulgarian born head of investigations at The Insider and Der
Spiegel journalist, and one of the bylines on this story, was informed by the law enforcement while on a visit to New York City that he could not safely
return home to Vienna, as his life was in danger. Marsalek, it turned out, had requested Grozev’s home address from Weiss, the former Austrian spy, in
December 2 2 , the day after Bellingcat, The Insider and Der Spiegel had published their joint investigation into the poisoning of Russian opposition
leader Alexei Navalny. Weiss had sent an encrypted message to Egisto Ott: “Could we make a query about a Mr. Christo Grozev in Austria?” it read,
ominously adding that Grozev was working “against our case.” Grozev, at both Bellingcat and The Insider, has been the lead sleuth in unmasking GRU
and FSB assassination plots, from the poisoning of the Skirpals in Salisbury with the military grade nerve agent Novichok, to the poisoning of Alexei
Navalny with a similar substance.
Ott told Der Spiegel that he had complied with this request from Weiss. “I only went to the registration office and paid 3.4 euros for the information
about where Grozev lives.” Ott further stated that he took photographs of Grozev’s apartment in Vienna. Asked why Weiss and behind him, Jan
Marsalek and Stanislav Petlinsky wanted the home address of a prominent investigative journalist, Ott replied that he gave it no thought. “I have
always fought the Russian intelligence service in my career,” Ott told Der Spiegel matter of factly.
Grozev now resides permanently in New York.
With additional reporting by Kato Kopaleishvili, Kate Manchester, Fidelius Schmid, and Roman Lehberger
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BUSINESS
Former Wirecard executive Jan
Marsalek accused of being behind
Russian spy ring
WIRECA RD WEBS ITE
SIMON HUNT, BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY
CORRESPONDENT @SIMONPETERHUNT | TRISTAN KIRK, COURTS
CORRESPONDENT @KIRKKORNER
26 SEPTEMBER 2023
SPONSORED
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28.07.2024, 14:37 Former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek accused of being behind Russian spy ring | Evening Standard
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/former-wirecard-executive-jan-marsalek-accused-of-being-behind-russian-spy-ring-b1109554.html 1/3

Recommended by
Former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek has been accused of being behind
a Russian spy ring operated out of the UK, according to a court case heard
today.
Five Bulgarian nationals are accused of having conspired to collect
information that would be useful to an enemy between August 2020 and
February this year.
The home of one of the suspects, 45-year-old Orlin Roussev, was used as a
“hub” for the alleged spying activity, Westminster magistrate’s court heard,
while a man “known as Jan Marsalek” is suspected of being the “tasker”.
Wirecard filed for bankruptcy in June 2020 after it revealed 1.9 billion euros
was missing from its accounts. CEO Markus Braun was subsequently arrested
and charged with fraud and accounting manipulation, which he denies.
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Marsalek, who is currently on the run from German police after Interpol
issued a warrant for his arrest, was chief operating officer of the firm and is
believed to have fled to a location near Moscow amid its collapse. He has not
been charged in connection with the Russian spy case.
Prosecutor Kathryn Selby told the court the defendants are accused of UK-
based espionage.
“All five are suspected of being part of an organised network of UK-based
Bulgarian nationals conducting surveillance and other information gathering
activities against several addresses and individuals on behalf of the Russian
state”, she said.
The prosecutor said the defendants are accused of “assisting the Russian state
in conducting hostile actions against specific targets including the potential
abduction of these targets.”
They each face an identical charge of conspiring to commit an indictable or
either way offence outside England and Wales in relation to offences against
the state.
All five suspects were arrested by the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism
Command in February under the Official Secrets Act.
They have been remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on October
13.

Image: Frank Hoermann/SVEN SIMON/picture alliance
RI E | U ITED KI DO
UK suspects Wirecard's Jan Marsalek of spying for Russia
09/ 6/ 0
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28.07.2024, 14:36 UK suspects Wirecard's Jan Marsalek of spying for Russia – DW – 09/26/2023
https://www.dw.com/en/uk-suspects-wirecards-jan-marsalek-of-spying-for-russia/a-66928487 1/2

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28.07.2024, 14:36 UK suspects Wirecard's Jan Marsalek of spying for Russia – DW – 09/26/2023
https://www.dw.com/en/uk-suspects-wirecards-jan-marsalek-of-spying-for-russia/a-66928487 2/2

U K N E WS WE BSITE O F THE Y E AR 2 0 24
See all News
The elite Russian spy embedded in the heart of Europe
Jan Marsalek was a high- ying executive until his secrets began to spill out. Now, there’s
been an astonishing twist...
By Ed Cumming
27 September 2023 • 7:00pm
Even before this week, the case of the Bulgarian spy ring was not short on intrigue. In a
story as rich as anything John Le Carré or Ian Fleming might have concocted, three
Bulgarian men and two women stand accused of running a two and a half year
espionage campaign in Britain.
The Crown alleges that Orlin Roussev, 45, of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk; Bizer
Dzhambazov, 41, of Harrow, north-west London; Katrin Ivanova, 31, of the same Harrow
address; Ivan Stoyanov, 31, from Greenford, west London; and Vanya Gaberova, 29, from
News Olympics Sport Business Money Opinion Ukraine US election Travel He
105
28.07.2024, 14:35 The elite Russian spy embedded in the heart of Europe
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/27/jan-marsalek-wirecard-fraud-elite-russian-spy/ 1/12

Churchway, north-west London, conspired to abduct targets on behalf of the Russian
security services.
These people were doing normal jobs. Gaberova, for instance, ran an award-winning
beauty salon, Pretty Women. Material enough to keep the newspapers happy for weeks.
But at Westminster magistrates’ court yesterday came a twist so extraordinary that if you
tried to put it in a thriller, any decent editor would throw it out for being too on-the-
nose.
Kathryn Selby, the prosecuting lawyer, claimed: “Information was fed back to the UK and
reporting was sent from the UK to a tasker on behalf of Russia, a person known as Jan
Marsalek.
”
Alleged Russian spies Orlin Roussev, Vanya Gaberova, Bizer Dzhambazov and Katrin Ivanova
For followers of global crime, it was a marmalade-dropper of a moment. Marsalek’s
alleged involvement in the Bulgarian spy ring is the latest turn in one of the most
extraordinary criminal sagas of recent times: the Wirecard fraud.
Until the spring of 2020, the payments company Wirecard was a pin-up for the German
nancial services sector, proof the country could compete with the Americans when it
came to dynamic ntech businesses. Marsalek, its chief operating o cer, was a pillar of
the European business community, a charismatic and smooth-talking executive who

spoke three languages and always had time for his colleagues. “For you, always,
” he
would say, no matter how busy he was.
But on June 18 that year, the company reported that nearly €2 billion was missing from its
accounts, practically all the pro t it had ever recorded, in what it would later call an
“elaborate and sophisticated fraud”
. The money had vanished, presumed stolen, from
two banks in the Philippines, a region under Marsalek’s aegis.
Wirecard suspended him at once. That evening, Marsalek met Martin Weiss, a friend
who had previously been a member of the Austrian intelligence services, for pizza in
Munich. Weiss arranged for Marsalek to get out of the country. The next day Marsalek
was driven across the border to Vienna and took o in a private jet from Bad Voslau, a
small air eld outside the Austrian capital for Minsk, and then on to Russia. It was the last
time Marsalek, who had at least eight passports, travelled under his own name.
Today Marsalek, 43, is one of the world’s most wanted men. He is not charged in the
Bulgarian spy case, but plenty of other authorities would like to ask him a question or
two. Interpol, for example, on whose “Red” list of the most notorious criminals at large
his name is listed, next to two pictures: in one he is clean cut, every inch the executive.
In the other he has a thick beard, the kind you would grow to disguise your identity.

Jan Marsalek is still at large
He is presumed to be living somewhere in Russia, having allegedly pulled o the biggest
fraud in German history. Compared with the Wirecard case, a ve-person Bulgarian spy
ring barely registers.

The Wirecard story starts more than two decades ago. Wirecard was founded in 1999,
based in Aschheim, a suburb of Munich, as a nancial payments company. Marsalek, a
talented computer hacker from Austria, joined the following year, on his 20th birthday,
tasked with helping the company modernise for the mobile era. He almost brought down
the company as soon as he arrived after an “accident” in which he sent all the incoming
tra c through his own computer rather than the company servers. In hindsight, it was a
warning.
Over the following years, under the leadership of its CEO, Markus Braun, Wirecard
expanded into payments for online gambling and pornography. Deals tended to be
structured in ways that avoided excess scrutiny, but through a series of acquisitions, the
rm grew. In 2009, Braun appointed Marsalek, then 29, as COO. He proceeded with a
series of forays into unregulated health supplements and foodstu s. Customers would
hand over their credit card information for a “trial”
, which it would be di cult to cancel.
In 2010, a man living in Florida, who was linked to Wirecard, was charged with
suspected fraud, and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. Apparently undeterred, Marsalek
turned his attention to Asia, buying up several small companies.
CEO Markus Braun was introduced at conferences as the ‘Steve Jobs of the Alps’ CREDIT: CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images
By 2014, the story had been brought to the attention of Dan McCrum, a reporter on the
Financial Times. Leo Perry, a hedge fund manager, had asked him if he would be
interested in some “German gangsters”
. adding that he ought to “be careful”
. When
McCrum went to visit one of Wirecard’s supposed companies in Bahrain, he found no

The Russian Spy Embedded in the World of Embedded Finance

The Russian Spy Embedded in the World of Embedded Finance

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