From the chief fraud of Germany to the priest: as the special services of the Russian Federation were hidden by Marsalek - The Insider (photo)
The Russian special services were recruited with the help of a young blonde, and then hid in the territory of their country under the guise of the priest ZDF, Spiegel, Standard and The Insider in a joint investigation. Journalists say that Jan Marselek was born in 1980 in Vienna and raised in the suburbs of the Austrian capital. He studied at the French Lyceum, then at a local high school.
Former teachers mentioned Marsalek as a good and gifted student, eloquent and with great talent for computer science. Back in 1999, at the age of 19, he fled home after a quarrel with his parents. At the same time, Wirecard as a financial company begins. Marsalek's mother, whom he has not been talking to for many years, was watching her son's career in the press. "I have been suspicious of Wirecard for a long time. Jan made a career there so quickly without even finishing school.
How is it possible?" The woman says. Almost all former Wirecard staff, teachers, lovers and friends Marsalek celebrate his charisma. "In it you immediately see a successful person who knows what he says and does what he does," says Pave Hill, former Wirecard's chief lawyer in Asia. Wirecard was engaged in technical processing of payments on credit cards from online stores. At first, these were mostly porn gambles and gambling sites.
However, in 10 years the company grew, and Marsalek himself in 2010, when he was 30 years old, became her chief operating director. The absence of a school certificate did not interfere with Marsalek, because he was able to program and was well understood in modern Internet technologies. At one time, this was enough to impress the founder of Wirecard Austrian Marcus Brown. Over the years, Brown and Marsalek bought a lot of assets - from telecommunications companies to airlines.
As it turns out later, the sharp take -off of the company was due not only to innovations but also by financial fraud: the company invented profit, manipulated balances and washed criminal money. However, for a long period, Wirecard was set as an example as the pride of the German economy and a sample of the new generation technological company. According to magazines, Marsalek quickly used to "live on a wide foot.
" For example, he attended Saint-Trope parties, dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for € 15,000, gave the champagne and cognac Rémy Martin Louis XIII to € 2500 for a bottle. In addition, Marsalek flew around the world, opening more and more child companies and buying subcontractors. However, as noted in the investigation, Marasalek's "ordinary business" was bored. "He needed adrenaline and was close in a white cell.
And when Zlobin and Petlinsky appeared in his life, it turns out that they can offer each other what both parties were missing," the message reads. On board, Poseidon III Marsalek was in 2014 as a guest and a new beloved Russian model Natalia Zlobina, who celebrated her 30th anniversary. On board Zlobin introduced Marsalek to her acquaintance Stanislav Petlinsky (he was Boris Green - ed. ), Presenting him as a "General Game".
Officially, Petlinsky was an adviser to the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, but during the war in Chechnya he commanded a unit of special forces of the GRU and has since been deeply involved in the activities of the Russian Federation. On Yacht Petlinsky entertained Marsalek stories about his feats in Chechnya and other spy adventures. The second, according to journalists, has long been interested in weapons, shooting and scouting.
Guests recall that Marsalek listened to Petlinsky with an unconcealed interest and by the end of the first evening "these two were inseparable. " Over the following years, Petlinsky has been increasingly active in the business and personal endeavors of Marsalek. According to several of his acquaintances, the life of the main character of the investigation was divided into "to" and "after Stas".
Petlinsky began to visit Munich and even told his friends that he had sent his sick mother there for treatment, which became a great reason to see Marsalek more often. Investigators write that Zlobina, who played a key role in the recruitment of Marsalek, has repeatedly helped Petlinsky "establish contact" with persons who are of interest to Russian special services.
At the time of acquaintance with Marsalek Zlobin, she worked in an advertising agency, and before that she had time to work with both the erotic model and the actress in the thrash films. Over the following years, she became a business partner of Marsalek, helping him to do business in Russia. According to journalists, they maintained close not only business but also personal relationships.
The couple traveled to Russia and abroad at the expense of the German company (in one of the letters a personal assistant Marasalek booked for Natalia to a trip to Barcelona in March 2015, including a hotel worth € 695 per night). In addition, one day, namely in September 2013, Jan and Natalia flew to the Grozny, where Marsalek went to officially meet Ramzan Kadyrov's family members.
Cadirov with friends had to move to Europe and wash around $ 400 million from their Hong Kong accounts, and Natalia presented Yana as a person capable of turning it. Zlobina organized other extreme adventures for Jan, including flight to the stratosphere at the fighter in May 2016. The Insider is unknown at what point in Zlobin began to work on the special services of the Russian Federation, but she accurately used some privileges characteristic of intelligence employees.
Yes, her passport data in the database was replaced by another woman's data. Also, all information about Natalia's trips were deleted from a complex Russian database. Journalists noted that similar gaps in the database were previously encountered in Russian spies and agents undercover. From the moment in the life of Marsalek, Zlobina and Petlinsky appeared, he turns from a boring financial manager into a person who lives the life together with militants of private military companies.
The special services of Russia, Marsalek, needed not so much as a person with money, but but as one who "can manage money", and also has excellent links in political and criminal circles in different parts of the world. After getting acquainted with Petlinsky Marsalek, completely new horizons are opened. He was introduced to the high -ranking staff of special services, oligarchs and officials of "all masters".
Petlinsky even managed to advance Marsalek to the post of "advisor" in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was very appropriate in September 2017, when Jan exceeded the term of stay in the country on a tourist visa and he urgently needed away documents. Also, according to the publication, in May 2017, Petlinsky, along with his other friend of Chechnya, who later headed the intelligence at the Wagner PEC, staged a Marsalek trip to Syria, where they visited Palmyra.
In Syria, Marsalek gave a complete set of Russian military uniforms and a sniper rifle. Upon his return, he boasted a friend who was allowed to "shoot combat with Islamic fighters. " Many of those who met with Marsalek in Munich in the summer of 2017, shortly after his return from Syria, described him as "very excited" and "lost his mental balance. " Subsequently, Marsalek becomes more and more difficult to maneuver between two lives. Its adrenaline dependence required more "sharp sensations".
The new Russian friends of Marsalek opened a variety of doors not only in the Russian Federation, but also wherever they could boast political ties and weight. For example, in Libya in 2017, on the advice of Petlinsky, Marsalek purchased a hatched cement company-after a civil war, a construction boom was waiting for the country, and the demand for cement was to jump.
And in order to clear the plant from thousands of mines that remained since the war, Marsalek even bought one of the Russian PVC in the region. According to investigators, he paid the corresponding purchase in cash, which he transported to Moscow on his private aircraft tranches of several hundred thousand dollars. "Marsalek had truly Napoleonic plans for Libya.
He saw that Russia shows great interest in a country rich in oil and gas reserves, which is crucial for controlling refugee flows to Europe. Marsalek not only bought in Libya a cement plant and his own PEC, But he was about to go on, "the material reads. In 2017, he appealed to the crisis expert Kilian Kleinshmidt, who worked for a long time in the UN, asking us to prepare a study for € 200,000 about how Libya could be restored.
And it seemed to be about making Libya the best place for people's lives. However, at the second meeting, Marselek called it "baby nonsense" and revealed his true idea: a military "conversion program", which will be prepared from 15 thousand to 20 thousand Libyan militias. The small army had to control the southern border of Libya and therefore migration flows. Marsalek also suggested for the money to broadcast videos from the mercenaries and their fights with Islamists.
Anyone who wants to look at it should do the donation of PVC. After such a conversation, Kleinshmidt stated that he no longer wants to have anything to do with all this, and left. Meanwhile, Wirecard's business is thriving. In 2018, the company was included in the DAX, the stock index of 30 valuable and most important companies in Germany.
She has almost 300,000 clients, transactions worth € 125 billion and a profit of half a billion - judging by the balance sheet, which will soon be recognized as fabricated. Formally, the main goal of Marsalek was to expand the business, but in his office at the Wirecard headquarters in Asshheim, he was almost visible, and his colleagues later confessed that he did not even know what he was doing.
In 2016, Marsalek built a personal office in the center of Munich in a four -storey villa, built in 1903 for Prince Alfonso Bavarsky. One of the undoubted advantages of the location of this office is that it was literally across the road from the Consulate General of the Russian Federation. His office was attended by politicians, bankers and intelligence agents from different countries. In particular, the former head of the Libyan intelligence. And, of course, Stanislav Petlinsky.
In addition, Marsalek equipped a villa hospital with medicines, hospital beds and gas masks. And at some point he brought safety experts from Israel so that they searched the house for "bugs". In 2018, Marsalek took himself to Martin Weiss, who for several years headed the Second Federal Directorate for the Protection of the Constitution and the fight against Austria terrorism (the main Austrian secret service - ed. ), Which is responsible for gathering information, investigation and analysis .
Thanks to Vais access, all the reconnaissance information collected by BVT enters the Marsalek table. Like all the information sent to Vienna by partnership services, such as the CIA, the German Department for the Protection of the Constitution or the Israeli Mossad. Weiss was probably not necessary for Marsalek for Wirecard business, but it was "very useful" on the new front of activity that arose in Marsalek after getting acquainted with Petlinsky.
Thus, Weiss "punched" dozens of people through internal databases to find out what power knows about them. These include Marsalek themselves and Petlinsky, as well as journalists, including Russian and Kazakh opposition. According to the materials of the Austrian investigation, especially often the objects of such "punching" were people "related to the interests of the Russian Federation.
" It is also interesting that the Austrian special services have not noticed anything for a long time - the possible "Russian moles" were stuck there after the escape of Marsalek. In particular, another BVT veteran - Egisto OTT. Even when he was a current employee, in 2017, foreign special services were probably CIA and Mi-6-scored: OTT repeatedly sent data from his official e-mail address to BVT to his personal account. He was suspected of espionage in favor of the Russian Federation.
His direct boss in BVT was Martin Weiss at that time. After this was removed from office, his agent network continued to work. He used to collect confidential information about the goals of Weiss and Marsalek. For such "cases" he attracted informants both within the country and abroad. According to the investigation, he received money from Martin Weiss. And even despite the severity of the accusations, he was released within a few weeks of detention.
Also, in 2019, in 2019, in 2019, at the request of Petlinsky Marsalek, because of his assistants, he found out why Arcadia Rothenberg and her sisters have constantly had problems when crossing borders in Europe. However, not all queries were as "innocent" as about Rotenberg's mistress. In 2020, the next day after the investigation of The Insider and Bellingcat - Weiss and OTT punched information about Bellingcat journalist Christ Grozev and was able to establish his place of residence.
Such physical tracking is not the only thing Marsalek could help Russian special services. He also managed to collect information through Wirecard, which had hundreds of thousands of customers around the world. Such clients, for example, were the Federal Criminal Police Department, dozens of international corporations. In the summer of 2019, Marsalek instructed Wirecard staff to gather a large set of such customer data, according to him, for the German Federal Intelligence Service.
However, it was later revealed that the BND never asked this data, and all the confidential information could have been in Moscow instead. The game could use Wirecard for gray funding for any project. In June 2020, Wirecard AG announced bankruptcy, as almost € 2 billion disappeared from the companies's accounts. A few days before, Marsalek disappears. One of Petlinsky's business partners is organizing a private plane, and the former Weiss agent organizes two pilots who "deserve trust.
" In order to confuse the tracks, Marsalek bribes the Philippines immigration service officials to make his arrival in the appropriate country. In fact, Marsalek landed in Belarus on the night of June 20, and then continued the car towards the capital of the Russian Federation. Such a transfer was organized by an official who was a good acquaintance of Petlinsky. Later, Marsalek was issued a passport named Konstantin Bayazov.
A person with the name and date of birth, as in the new Marsalek passport, really exists - a priest who serves in a small church in the Lipetsk region. The photography is glued to the Bayazova passport file. Bayazov himself replied in response to the request of the comment: "You understand that I can't talk about it. " Subsequently, with the help of Petlinsky Marsalek, he found himself in the Crimea, where he already used his new passport named Bayazov.
Investigators add that the temporarily occupied peninsula seems to be a very popular place in the FSB in order to bury their people. For example, a year before, the FSB staff accompanied the wife of Killer Vadim Krasikov, on the eve of the arrested in Germany for the murder of Chechen commander Zelimman Khangshvili. Later, Marsalek will be lit in Moscow with two other identities: one (Alexander Schmidt) he had already used earlier, but the other (Vitaliy Malkin) was not used before.
Journalists point out that Vitaliy Malkin is also a priest, this time from Vladimir. He stated that he had no idea that someone used his passport data. In 2020 he lost his passport and made himself a new one. It was the data of this old, lost passport that Marsalek used. The British Prosecutor's Office claims that Marsalek has not stopped in the Russian Federation.
The man is accused of leadership during 2020-2023 by a gang of five Bulgarians who spied in Europe for people who did not like the Kremlin, perhaps for the purpose of abduction or murder. Evidence in the case, including about 80,000 reports on the chat, show that the exact instructions for Bulgarians came from Marsalek in Telegram. Apparently, they were paid in cryptocurrency and cash through a mediator. The trial over the Bulgarian spy group should begin at the end of 2024.
Jan Marsalek is likely not to be on the defendants. He is still hiding in Russia, although, according to The Insider, he sometimes travels with counterfeit documents. Ймовірно, значна частина вкрадених грошей, як і раніше, залишається в його розпорядженні. Наприклад, у 2021 року через свій офшор Марсалек намагався купити аеропорт у Софії.
Якби йому це вдалося, він дістав би унікальний доступ до баз бронювання авіаквитків, настільки важливий для російських спецслужб. Нагадаємо, 31 жовтня повідомлялося, що журналіст, який працював на ФСБ, отримав 10 років в'язниці.