This is made clear by chats that have now become known with a Bulgarian who is now imprisoned in Great Britain and is said to have led a multi-member espionage cell working for Russia.
The men of Bulgarian origin are accused by British law enforcement authorities of collecting secret and useful information for Russian secret services from August 2020 to February 2023 and of spying on people in Great Britain and other European countries. Marsalek exchanged ideas actively with the alleged head of this group, who had already been prosecuted and who moved to Great Britain in 2009 and is considered a proven specialist in wiretapping techniques. Marsalek reported on a shooting exercise “with the Alfa boys”, a special unit of the Russian domestic secret service FSB. Marsalek and his interlocutor also discussed “active measures” against the Russia-critical investigative journalist Christo Grozev.
Grozev lived in Vienna until the beginning of 2023. He had researched the poison attacks on Sergei Skripal and Alexei Navalny, in December 2022 the Russian Interior Ministry put him on a wanted list, and in February 2023 Grozev moved to the USA for security reasons. It is now certain that Grozev was one of at least 309 people affected for whom Marsalek made illegal queries from police databases or obtained confidential, confidential information. Marsalek, who is said to have been given new identities after his successful escape to Moscow and has been carrying out secret service work for Moscow since then, is said to have made use of two former employees of the domestic Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Ott is said to have accessed secret databases since 2017
Marsalek is said to have met the former counterintelligence chief of the now dissolved Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counter-Terrorism (BVT), Martin Weiss, in 2015, and the internationally well-connected ex-BVT employee Egisto Ott is said to have accessed secret databases since 2017 and even received legal assistance from Italy and Great Britain obtained information for Marsalek and Russia. In chats with the alleged agent operating in Great Britain, Marsalek called Martin Weiss “our friend” whose “evacuation” to Dubai he had organized. Weiss, who has been in the United Arab Emirates since last year, is said to have been Egisto Ott’s “contact person and client” with regard to activities for Marsalek.
On Tuesday, the Vienna regional court said in response to a recent media report, according to which Ott had made a “partial confession” after his arrest, and that during his interrogation on the occasion of the imposition of pre-trial detention, Ott had rejected the intelligence activities assigned to him to the detriment of the Republic. “In this respect, he did not confess to the core of the allegations before the journal judge,” confirmed court spokeswoman Christina Salzborn.
“We are no longer representing you in this matter”
The report in the “Kronen Zeitung” went on to say that Ott was “possibly seeking a deal with the public prosecutor’s office.” The spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office, Nina Bussek, explained: “There is no deal.” Bussek did not want to provide any further information about Ott and, above all, about possible steps against Martin Weiss, citing the ongoing investigation. The Federal Criminal Police Office also kept a low profile and blocked questions. Ott’s previous defense attorney, who represented him until Easter, is likely to have terminated the attorney-client relationship. “We are no longer representing you in this matter,” said the lawyer’s office on Tuesday, who could not be personally reached by telephone for the time being.
Together with the head of the British espionage cell in the service of Russia, Marsalek is said to have organized the procurement of three company cell phones from high-ranking cabinet employees at the Interior Ministry at the time, whose devices fell into the water during a boat trip in 2017. The data was supposed to be saved, which failed. The cell phones subsequently ended up with Egisto Ott via a police officer, who made them available in a relative’s apartment in Vienna-Floridsdorf. They were picked up there on June 10, 2022 by men on behalf of Marsalek and are said to have been taken to Moscow for evaluation. Russia had invaded Ukraine almost four months earlier.
Official secret: Sensitive data found on cell phones
According to the investigation file, the cell phones contained sensitive official and private data of top officials in the interior department that was subject to official secrecy. Several SINA laptops were also likely to be of considerable interest to Russia, although it is not yet clear how they came into Ott’s possession. They are said to have contained highly sensitive, confidential data from an EU state. SINA stands for Secure Inter-Network Architecture, which enables the transmission and processing of sensitive information in insecure networks. The SINA product family, developed since 2000, contains the only IP-based cryptosystems approved by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) up to the highest national classification level (“Top Secret”). The focus is on protecting electronic information from unauthorized access.
Russian agents with false passports
Russian agents equipped with false passports are said to have picked up one of these laptops from the apartment of Ott’s relative on November 19, 2022 and brought it to Russia via Istanbul, directly to the FSB headquarters in Moscow. 20,000 euros are said to have been paid for this, and Marsalek had the money brought from Berlin to Vienna, as can be seen from the chats.
