The fugitive Jan Marsalek, former COO of Wirecard, was also a spy

Or where is Jan Marsalek, part two ...

As the headlines rolled out last week, I heard a name: Jan Marsalek, the former COO of disgraced fintech star Wirecard. It turns out that he was also the central figure in a GRU, Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie (Russian military intelligence unit), operation created to spy across the world targetting and potentially taking out journalists and other figures opposing Putin. This gets weirder.

I’ve written a lot about Wirecard, most recently with the man who unravelled the scheme: Dan McCrum, although there is a lot more behind it (from 2020).

For those not familiar, Wirecard was the German company that became a Fintech supernova. Today, Wirecard is a former firm or, as Monty Python would say: “This is a late fintech! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace”.

The big question however is: where is Jan Marsalek?

Some believe he has become a Russian Orthodox priest* but, wherever he’s gone, he’s a wanted man. In fact he’s pretty high up on Interpol’s most wanted list, and what I find amazing is how a man working for the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, could become COO of Germany’s fintech poster child, Wirecard.

According to Wikipedia he began working for Wirecard in 2000, initially hired for his knowledge on WAP systems. On 1 February 2010, he became the firm's chief operating officer and also joined the company's executive committee. Ten years later, the company fell apart in a scandal of moving funds through shell companies, falsely inflating the balance sheet, corrupt business practices and fraudulent financial reporting, all of this exposed by Dan McCrum who was under threat from Wirecard and Bafin, the German regulator.

It is now widely believed that throughout this period, Marsalek was working for GRU. In fact, surprisingly for me, is that there was a court case concluded on Friday where his name cropped up.

The court case concerned three Bulgarians who were found to be the centre of a Russian spy group based in Britain. Here’s the BBC’s summary of the case:

Three Bulgarian nationals have been found guilty of spying for Russia, in what police have described as "one of the largest" foreign intelligence operations in the UK.

Vanya Gaberova, 30, Katrin Ivanova, 33, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, who were all living in London, were part of a group who travelled Europe carrying out surveillance.

While the trio had day jobs as a beautician, a healthcare worker, and a decorator, the cell they were part of plotted to kidnap and kill targets, as well as planned to ensnare them in so-called honeytraps.

The methods they used were the sort of thing you would "expect to see in a spy novel", said the Metropolitan Police's Cdr Dominic Murphy.

They were working for fellow Bulgarian Orlin Roussev, 47, who ran the spy ring from a 33-room former guest house in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.

Here police found a "treasure trove" of spying gadgets and equipment, including cameras hidden in ties, a camera hidden in a fake rock, and glasses containing recording equipment.

The cell's key targets were investigative journalists Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, whose work includes exposing Russia's role in the nerve agent attacks on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020 and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

As part of the surveillance, Gaberova was instructed to befriend Mr Grozev, with Roussev describing him as "hooked and in love" with her in WhatsApp messages.

Roussev received instructions from Jan Marsalek, who is wanted in Germany for his alleged fraud linked to the financial services company Wirecard.

The Austrian national was described by prosecutors as an "intermediary for the Russian intelligence services".

Roussev and Marsalek met a decade ago, with Roussev subsequently recruited as a spy. He then recruited other Bulgarians to undertake espionage operations.

Orlin Roussev was arrested by police in a guesthouse in Great Yarmouth.

Roussev was at one stage the chief technology officer for a city of London financial firm.

Read the BBC’s full report for more.

According to Roussev’s LinkedIn profile, he worked at Atrium Network, a company providing connectivity solutions for the financial community, and owned a company called NewGenTech Ltd, focused upon next generation communications. Makes sense.

Oh, and how did the spy cell get caught? Forgetting to delete messages. The police found more than 80,000 messages between Roussev and Marsalek on his devices. Whoops! So much for his expertise in next generation communications.

Commander Dominic Murphy, Head of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, revealed: “This was spying on almost industrial scale, on behalf of Russia, the Russian state and Russian intelligence services … [the] key to unlocking this was the search warrant at Great Yarmouth and finding Roussev’s device, which gave us that long Telegram chat between him and Jan Marsalek.”

The spy cell members will be sentenced in May and face up to fourteen years in jail. Meantime, what strikes me as I write this, is that over ten years ago I wrote that Russian’s use the UK banking system to corrupt the world. Not much changes.

 

 

* Jan Marsalek, the former Chief Operating Officer of Wirecard, is currently believed to be living in Russia. His exact whereabouts remain unknown, but he is thought to be under the protection of Russian authorities. Most media believe he is protected by the FSB, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, in the Moscow area.

Marsalek fled Germany in June 2020 after Wirecard's financial scandal became public, initially traveling to Belarus. He is wanted by Interpol for his role in the Wirecard scandal and is also accused of being involved in Russian espionage activities across Europe. Despite international efforts to locate him, Marsalek remains at large.