2023-08-16 22:46:38
Jan Marsalek
The picture shows the former Wirecard board member (right) at an earlier meeting with confidants in the United Arab Emirates.
(Photo: private)
Düsseldorf Orlin Roussev had good news. In an email dated May 11, 2015, the Bulgarian wrote that he knew a Chinese provider who was “more than capable” of supplying “high-quality, tailor-made solutions” for smartphones and other electronic devices. Recipient: Wirecard’s Asia boss at the time, Jan Marsalek.
Roussev wrote that he himself had already ordered several “extremely robust telephones” with “rather exotic functions” and was impressed. The provider shows a “rare level of creativity and thinking”. Marsalek should let him know which email to use “to introduce you (and how to pitch the official story).”
The email exchange that is available to the Handelsblatt sheds new light on the Russian connections of the fugitive Wirecard manager. Roussev is one of three Bulgarian nationals held in pre-trial detention in the UK since February. They are believed to have been spying for Russia’s secret services.
Roussev exchanged nine emails with Marsalek’s Wirecard email address. From them it appears that the Bulgarian gave him a special Samsung smartphone and access to the so-called SS7 telecommunications protocol. The “London Dossier Center”, behind which Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky stands, first reported on the emails.
Roussev sent Marsalek step-by-step instructions, asking the manager: “Please do it on the phone I gave you.” If Marsalek ever loses the phone, Roussev said in an email dated June 14, 2015, it could be tracked in this way. “Even if someone changes the SIM card, it can silently contact you.”
Jan Marsalek
The police have been looking for the ex-manager since 2020.
(Photo: dpa)
The Bulgarian also promised: “I will send you the SS7 logs as soon as I have them”. The SS7 protocol allows mobile network providers to communicate with each other. However, German security experts proved in 2014 that users with access to the protocol could eavesdrop on third-party conversations. Localizations are therefore also possible.
Marsalek marked the email as “important”. He apparently got help setting up his SIM card from a Russian living in the Czech Republic named Anton and his contacts in the mobile phone industry. Roussev Marsalek promised on June 16, 2015: “Anton will be back in Prague tomorrow and will do the configuration personally.”
Wirecard collapsed in June 2020, Marsalek disappeared shortly afterwards. Since then, more and more details about his connections to Russia have become known. The investigative magazine Bellingcat reported that the Austrian has traveled to the country more than 60 times since 2010 and is said to have used around ten different passports.
Marsalek boasted of intelligence contacts
The Handelsblatt has photos in which Marsalek poses near Moscow with certificates from a company that offers amusement flights in Russian fighter jets. According to people close to him, the Austrian boasted about a trip to Palmyra, Syria, in 2017 – at the time he was only able to get there with Russian intelligence agents.
In Libya, Marsalek is said to have helped transfer funds for foreign operations by Russian secret services. In 2018, he allegedly showed around in London financial circles documents with the secret formula of the Russian nerve agent Novichok, which he is said to have received from an Austrian agent.
Marsalek obviously had close connections not only with the Russian secret service. German investigators believe he is an informant from the Austrian BVT intelligence service. At the end of 2020, the Federal Prosecutor General “has indications of this,” said the Federal Ministry of Justice in a response to a written question from the then member of the Bundestag Fabio De Masi.
It is also certain that Marsalek fled to the Belarusian capital Minsk in June 2020 with the help of a former BVT agent in a chartered private plane. From there he is said to have been taken to Moscow by the Russian foreign intelligence service SWR. According to Handelsblatt research, Marsalek lived there for at least a while in the posh suburb of Razdory.
Various media reported last year that Marsalek is said to have a Russian passport and continues to lead a sophisticated lifestyle in Moscow under the name “German Bazhenov”. In addition, photos are circulating that are supposed to show Marsalek in front of a posh fish restaurant.
Roussev and the other Bulgarians arrested in Britain are said to have had multiple passports. The investigators accuse the trio of possessing the identity documents from Italy, France and Great Britain, among others, with “unfair intentions”. They had lived and worked in the kingdom for years.
According to his Linkedin profile, Roussev is the owner of the company NewGenTech LTD. The company deals, among other things, with “signal intelligence”, i.e. the evaluation of electronic signals to obtain secret service information.
The connections to Marsalek that have now become known are fueling speculation, which the Moscow newspaper Versiya, which is close to the secret services, expressed back in 2020. With a view to the Wirecard scandal, the newspaper wrote: “We do not see the end, but the beginning of a great espionage story…”
More: Jan Marsalek fled to this luxury district.
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