Ex-Wirecard COO Suspected as Decade-Long Russian Agent (wsj.com) 23
Soon after payment-processing giant Wirecard reported in June 2020 that nearly $2 billion had gone missing from its balance sheet, its chief operating officer Jan Marsalek boarded a private jet out of Austria. After a landing in Belarus, he was whisked by car to Moscow, where he got a Russian passport under an assumed name. Western intelligence and security officials now say they have reached the unsettling conclusion that Marsalek had likely been a Russian agent for nearly a decade. From a report: Marsalek already stands accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. Following multiple international investigations, officials from intelligence, police and judiciary agencies in several countries now say the 43-year-old native of Austria used his defunct payments company to illegally help Russian spy agencies move money to fund covert operations around the world.
One of the most wanted men in the world, Marsalek has also provided assistance to the mercenary organization of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late Russian warlord, and is now involved in the reconfiguration of his business empire in Africa on behalf of Russian officials from his new domicile in Dubai, according to Western intelligence. Wirecard got its start processing payments for pornography websites on its way to becoming an Internet finance behemoth. During its heyday, the company claimed to process $140 billion of transactions a year on behalf of a quarter million businesses, making it a rival of Square and PayPal. It was briefly valued at more than any German bank. Former associates remember Marsalek as a bon vivant who at one point rented a Munich mansion for 35,000 euros, or $38,000, a month. He was making millions of dollars a year in salary and crisscrossing the globe in private jets. He was also obsessed with the cloak-and-dagger world of espionage, often intimating that he had connections with intelligence officers, they say -- claims many dismissed as bluster.
One of the most wanted men in the world, Marsalek has also provided assistance to the mercenary organization of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late Russian warlord, and is now involved in the reconfiguration of his business empire in Africa on behalf of Russian officials from his new domicile in Dubai, according to Western intelligence. Wirecard got its start processing payments for pornography websites on its way to becoming an Internet finance behemoth. During its heyday, the company claimed to process $140 billion of transactions a year on behalf of a quarter million businesses, making it a rival of Square and PayPal. It was briefly valued at more than any German bank. Former associates remember Marsalek as a bon vivant who at one point rented a Munich mansion for 35,000 euros, or $38,000, a month. He was making millions of dollars a year in salary and crisscrossing the globe in private jets. He was also obsessed with the cloak-and-dagger world of espionage, often intimating that he had connections with intelligence officers, they say -- claims many dismissed as bluster.
Fuzzy boundary of "agent" (Score:3, Interesting)
Real spies don't brag that they're spies, they are trained to STFU. He's probably a rich wannabe-spy, so Russia decided to use him anyhow: a useful idiot who happened to succeed.
Re:Fuzzy boundary of "agent" (Score:5, Funny)
...not too different from the useful idiot at Mar-a-Lago.
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Linkit or stinkit
Re: Fuzzy boundary of "agent" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Fuzzy boundary of "agent" (Score:5, Funny)
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The real question does *anyone* have any real spies anymore?
How many articles have we seen about various US intelligence failures being due to lack of people on the ground? A lot and for a long time now.
I think as a practical matter getting pre-80s "charm school" type of spies anywhere important is pretty darn difficult now days. Big data and all the things we associated often with surveillance-capitalism will generally reveal them. The IC buys up all that data too, we know they do, its a big public fight
Russia has real spies (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Fuzzy boundary of "agent" (Score:4, Interesting)
Russia probably doesnt have many REAL spies anymore.
Au contraire. A binder containing raw, unredacted information on U.S. and allied intelligence regarding Russian spies and Russian assets went missing in the last few days of the Con Artist regime [cnn.com]:
The binder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days in office. The former president had ordered it brought there so he could declassify a host of documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. Under the care of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the binder was scoured by Republican aides working to redact the most sensitive information so it could be declassified and released publicly.
The Russian intelligence was just a small part of the collection of documents in the binder, described as being 10 inches thick and containing reams of information about the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. But the raw intelligence on Russia was among its most sensitive classified materials, and top Trump administration officials repeatedly tried to block the former president from releasing the documents.
All countries need people to do spy work. Signit isn't enough. You need someone on the ground in a position to gather intelligence which is otherwise unobtainable. You need someone to report on the highest levels of government discussions. You need someone who can provide substance to publicly known information. None of this can be done simply through hacking.
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nah, people are people, people boast.
I used to believe that people who had attained a certain social position etc, had to be 'mature' and beyond petty nonsense. The older I have got and the near to many of these people I have got the more I realize that all people, not excluding myself by any means, are mostly guilt of the same sins of pride etc.
I would not at this point expect spies to be an exception. And if they actually were, it would probably make them stand out. They'd probably have to add it into t
Re: Fuzzy boundary of "agent" (Score:2)
Most spies are recruited, it's not like they get invited to spy school. That's just how it goes. Tablizer how'd you like $500 a month in exchange for telling me what's going on at work once a week. That's it, it's not some James Bond shit. IDK what boundary you expect, if his heart wasn't really in it, if he was coerced? Of course it gets fuzzy, duh.
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Yeah, sure, why don't you travel to Moscow and assassinate him. Let us know how it goes.
paywalled nonsense (Score:1)
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Just pretend you're a Russian spy and hack WSJ's paywall.
More likely he stole money and ran with info (Score:2)
More likely he was embezzling a lot of money from the company, and made sure he had done some useful favors for the Russians so he had someplace safe to run/protect him and his stolen money.
If he was smart he would have known he was eventually going to get caught and his end game was to run just before he got arrested. It is a better plan than most criminals have. Usually the plan is to steal the cash/car and party, with no consideration on how to avoid getting arrested/put in jail fairly quickly.
Prigoshin did real well for himself (Score:3)
Ol' Priggy had gold bars and stacks of U.S. currency stashed all over his house, hundreds of millions of dollars worth. I highly doubt that Wirecard was his only corrupt contact, or even his most valuable one.
This seems a decent place to mention I've recorded seven songs regarding this war, four of them from Prig's POV. A couple of them lean pretty heavily on the notion that he was attempting to retrieve a great deal of this stash when he was blown out of the sky.
Monumental Erections, by Der Pütinflüffer [bandcamp.com]