In and Out at the FSB: A Window into the Moscow Life of Wirecard's Jan Marsalek
SOURCE:Spiegel International
German police have been searching for years for Jan Marsalek, who is suspected of having embezzled billions of euros through Wirecard and thought to be working as an agent for the Russian intelligence agency FSB. DER SPIEGEL tracked him down in Moscow.
One of the most-wanted men in Europe seems relaxed as he strolls across Moscow’s Trubnaya Square on July 1. A pair of sunglasses is dangling from the collar of his white T-shirt, his girlfriend’s hand clutched in his own. A nice couple, it seems. Tatiana and Jan.
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 39/2025 (September 19th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.
The two of them met through work. And both share the experience of starting a new life. Jan was once the chief operating officer of Wirecard, the financial services company once traded on Germany’s blue-chip stock index DAX. Tatiana, meanwhile, was a translator for Turkish. Now, it seems that the two of them share an employer: the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB. Agents working on behalf of Moscow.
At first glance, it is a wildly romantic story with all the elements of a crime novel. Netflix material. There’s the thing with the assassination plan. Not to mention the attempted kidnappings.
Jan Marselek, a fugitive since 2020, fleeing an international arrest warrant, is not the hero of the story, though. He is the villain. A man who systematically defrauded and lied to clients as a business executive, a school dropout who climbed up the managerial ranks, a board member at Wirecard, one of the greatest rising stars of the DAX in decades. But it was all a scam. Billions of euros vanished, and 6,000 employees lost their jobs, making it one of the grandest stories of fraud in postwar German history. Now that he has embarked on his life on the lam, though, Marsalek has doubled down on his career as a super-criminal. To the point that even murder is apparently no longer beyond the pale.
Jan Marselek is well disguised, with numerous identities and a palette of real and fake passports. A man who is being protected by the highest echelons of power. Seemingly untouchable for the European investigators, prosecutors and intelligence agencies on his trail.
Fugutive Jan Marsalek with his girlfriend Tatiana Spiridonova in July 2025 in Moscow.
[M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: ITAR-TASS / IMAGO, Bloomberg / Getty Images, DER SPIEGEL
And yet a team of reporters from DER SPIEGEL, the German public broadcaster ZDF, the Austrian daily Der Standard and the Russian investigative platform "The Insider” managed to find him in Moscow and spent over a year tailing him. The reporters have gained insight into the life of a man on the run, beholden to his protectors and repeatedly ingratiating himself with Russian agents by taking care of missions to which he is assigned.
Marsalek often passes through the turnstiles of the subway station Lubyanka in the morning, from where it is just a few steps to the fortress-like headquarters of FSB. He has frequently been caught on camera at the site, such as in March, wearing a dark blue suit, dark blue tie and black glasses, his hair cut short.
Other images show him making his way through the summery shopping streets of Moscow, winding his way along the full sidewalks on an e-scooter.
Marsalek has also traveled on several occasions to the Crimea Peninsula. And even further afield, it is said in Moscow security circles: as a fighter to the Russian-Ukrainian front.
FSB headquarters in Moscow; Marsalek with his phone in Moscow; surveillance cameras.
[M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: Alexander Nemenov / AFP, Artyom Geodakyan / TASS / picture alliance, Komsomolskaya Pravda / Picvario / picture alliance, Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg / Getty Images, DER SPIEGEL
Those interested in getting close to Marsalek are well-advised to do so via his girlfriend. Her name is Tatiana Spiridonova, born on January 24, 1984. Official job title: translator.
Spiridonova, a slim and athletic woman with reddish-blonde hair, has a degree in Oriental Studies and an impressive network. She is active in the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, for example, founded in 1982 to foster relations between Russia and the Middle East. Western experts, though, see it primarily as an instrument of Russian intelligence. The leader of the society was once the director of the FSB.
Spiridonova’s ties to the Russian state are also documented by data leaked from an administrative database in Moscow containing information about citizens who have applied for electronic passports. According to her profile in the database, she held a diplomatic passport for several years with clearance for access to confidential information up to the "top secret” level.
Marsalek met her in 2021, if not before. The two of them have a shared acquaintance, a central player in the network of Russian secret services, a shadowy figure who spins numerous webs for Moscow in the background. His name is Stanislav Petlinsky. As DER SPIEGEL reported last year , he is thought to have recruited Marsalek as an agent 11 years ago.
The team of reporters has been pursuing Marsalek’s trail since the collapse of Wirecard. It seems that the former executive planned his disappearance well in advance. A former Austrian intelligence officer came to his aid even before the Munich public prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant.
This former agent arranged for a private jet, which first took Marsalek to Belarus. After a brief stay there, Russian agents then brought him to Moscow, as DER SPIEGEL was able to reconstruct. Once there, he was outfitted with the fraudulent passport of a Russian Orthodox priest and hidden in Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine.
Even as German officials were hoping that Marsalek was perhaps just searching for the missing Wirecard billions somewhere in the world and would eventually return, the ex-executive established a new life for himself with the help of his agent friends. His most important contact, as the team of reporters discovered, was Stanislav Petlinsky. The man who had apparently recruited Marsalek for Russian intelligence several years earlier.
In February 2024, DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to meet with Petlinsky in Dubai. During that meeting, he denied that Marsalek had ever been recruited for Russian secrete service. But Petlinsky enjoyed talking about Marsalek and their close relationship, describing him as "super precise, a bit autistic really.” And: "Human relationships are not Jan’s biggest strength. He lacks empathy.”
Petlinsky had known Spiridonova for many years by the time he apparently introduced her to Marsalek, as leaked telephone and travel data show. In Moscow, Marsalek, a native of Austria, was told he should learn Russian. And Spiridonova is good with languages. It was a perfect match. One that turned out even better than hoped.
Secret service contact Stanislav Petlinsky sharing a meal with Marsalek; translator Spiridonova; Bulgarian gang leader Roussev.
Foto: [M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: Metropolitan Police / AP, DER SPIEGEL (2)
It quickly became apparent how well the two of them worked together as a team – such as during an operation in June 2022. Always eager to curry favor with his Russian patrons, Marsalek set his sights on powerful Austrians, using a spy network he had established in Vienna – a fact European officials would only uncover later.
Through an intermediary, Marsalek’s helpers were able to acquire the smartphones of three high-ranking officials from the Austrian Interior Ministry. Following a boating accident, the officials had given the devices to a domestic intelligence official for repair. Years later, the phones found their way to Marsalek’s spies and, ultimately, to Moscow for analysis.
On June 10, 2022, a courier took possession of the three mobile phones in Vienna. From there, he initially funneled them to Istanbul, where the devices were then handed over to someone else. The path of the phones is shown by chat logs that have been seized along with leaked Russian flight and phone data.
On June 11, just one day after the devices were transferred to the courier in Vienna, Spiridonova traveled to Istanbul from Moscow, as the leaked data shows. "The girl just landed,” Marsalek wrote to the courier that same day, according to a chat log DER SPIEGEL has acquired. One day later, and apparently in possession of the three telephones, Spiridonova flew back to Moscow. Mission accomplished.
Reporting has found that the operation was repeated just a few months later. On December 13, Spiridonova apparently took possession of a laptop in Istanbul that had been acquired by Marsalek’s helpers in Vienna. They were apparently interested in the devices German security technology.
One day earlier, Marsalek had informed a contact in the agent network of his girlfriend’s arrival. "Where should my girl go after she has landed?” he asked. Afterwards, Marsalek reported on the operation’s success in a chat message. The laptop, he wrote, is "in a car on its way to Lubyanka,” apparently using shorthand for the FSB headquarters. British authorities later released the incriminating messages. Further data examined by the reporting team confirmed the trip to the intelligence agency’s headquarters.
In the meantime, the new agent dream team of Jan and Tatiana grew closer. Much closer. Work colleagues who spend a lot of time with each other: hardly a rarity. Spiridonova was married when she first met Marsalek, but then separated from her husband. Court documents show that the divorce was finalized in early April 2022.
Spiridonova kept her apartment, a 73-square-meter (785-square-foot) apartment south of the Moscow city center, located on a small street – Stremyanny Pereulok 37 – in an unremarkable neighborhood. A yoga studio in the courtyard, an economics university kitty-corner across the street, plaster crumbling from the beige façade of the three-story, prewar building.
Marsalek became a frequent visitor. He dropped by on June 13, for example, and then again two days later on June 15. He can be seen in front of the building’s entrance on footage from a surveillance camera. The device is built into the building’s steel doorway and provides extremely high-resolution images: Marsalek in front of the door last fall in a wool cap and scarf. In summer, his beard freshly trimmed and a smile on his face, looking upward. Perhaps he is greeting Tatiana at the window.
Marsalek in front of Tatiana Spiridonova's apartment, as seen by the security camera.
[M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: ZDF (3), DER SPIEGEL
It would, of course, be interesting to speak to him personally in the apartment at Stremyanny Pereulok 37, together with Tatiana. And before the war, such a meeting might have been possible. These days, though, being a journalist in Moscow can be extremely dangerous, especially when reporting on a spy. Still, there is quite a bit to be learned about Jan Marsalek’s life from a distance.
The fact, for example, that he takes frequent trips with Spiridonova. An examination of flight information and ticket bookings, available in leaked travel databases, turns up another male companion. His name is Alexander Nelidov.
On July 3, 2023, for instance, Spiridonova flew back to Moscow together with her son, then 15 years old, from the Russian spa town of Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus. Nelidov was with them. According to passport information, Nelidov was born on February 22, 1978, in the then-Soviet city of Riga, and now lives in Moscow, at Tolbuchin Street 7, apartment 54. In reality, though, an elderly woman lives at that address.
If you dig deeper into the publicly available passport databases, additional inconsistencies come to light. The passport entry is new, issued on June 5, 2023. Alexander Nelidov, allegedly a Ukrainian originally, has supposedly only recently received his Russian citizenship. But there was never an Alexander Nelidov in Ukraine, as reporting has found.
No wonder. The photo on a scan of the passport that DER SPIEGEL has obtained clearly shows Jan Marsalek.
Nelidov, as reporting has found, is just one of at least six identities Marsalek uses to disguise his life in Russia. On two occasions, he has taken over the documents of Russian priests he resembles. He also has a falsified passport from Belgium, issued in the name of Alexandre Schmidt. But the photo, once again, is of Marsalek.
The fugitive rotates his identities when he travels, apparently in an effort to conceal his movements. This becomes clearer when the movements of his girlfriend Tatiana are followed. On December 28, 2024, she took a train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, departing at 8 a.m. Alexandre Schmidt was also on board the train, according to passenger data from a leaked booking system.
The falsified passport belonging to a priest; a real passport for Nelidov; passport photos of the priest and of Marsalek.
[M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: DER SPIEGEL
Russia is a surveillance state, an authoritarian system that is constantly collecting information about its citizens. But that also makes it vulnerable. Delivery services, video surveillance systems, passport offices: There is hardly a sector in Russia from which mass amounts of data is not being leaked. The data troves come from frustrated agency officials and demotivated company employees. Hackers also put freshly siphoned data on the internet almost daily. For reporters, it is a treasure trove of information.
As such, it was but a small step from the uncovering of Marsalek’s secret Nelidov identity to a mobile phone number that he apparently uses. It is listed in several different databases to which the reporting team gained access. It was listed, for example, as a contact for a flight booking in summer 2023. It was also saved in an insurance database.
This was the decisive lead the reporting team had spent years pursuing – the opportunity to establish direct contact with Marsalek. In early September, reporters from DER SPIEGEL and ZDF called the number through the messaging app Telegram. The profile photo of the account showed a cartoon bear wearing sunglasses. The ringing could be heard through the speaker function. Then, someone declined the call at the other end.
The reporters then tried to establish contact via text messaging. The answer arrived in Russian after just five minutes. "Tell me who I’m talking to, please?” A journalist introduced himself and asked for Jan Marsalek’s alias Alexander Nelidov. The response: "You have made a mistake.”
But the chat didn’t end there. Additional messages arrived from the Telegram account linked to this number thought to belong to Alexander Nelidov. Such as an inquiry about what the journalists wanted to talk about. DER SPIEGEL and ZDF responded by suggesting they wished to discuss two other journalists Marsalek had spied on for the FSB. After a long pause came the terse answer: "Very interesting characters.”
The chat reporters conducted with a user believed to be Marsalek.
[M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Foto: ZDF
The chat went back and forth a few times and the reporters then asked whether this person thought to be Marsalek wanted to speak on the phone. "A very interesting offer,” came the response. Then, the exchange broke off.
"Very interesting” is also a good way to describe all that reporters can learn in Russia once they have the mobile phone number of a person of interest. Especially with leaked location data. It allows for the creation of a detailed movement profile of the person in question. Whenever the telephone connects with a cell, the location of the tower is recorded.
The result is seemingly unending tables containing times, numbers and position data. Once that information is synched with a map, Jan Marsalek’s apparent location can be seen when he is using the Nelidov telephone.
Gaps remain, of course, and the information is sometimes patchy. It seems that Marsalek does not use the phone every day. Sometimes, days or weeks go by without him leaving a trace.
Nevertheless, the information available reveals the user’s routines and habits due to the long period of observation in combination with additional sources of information.
Not every single registration of the telephone on Lubyanka Square corresponds to a visit to the FSB. If Marsalek is moving, the telephone jumps around among numerous cell towers. As such, the phone may be registered several times at one place in a single day. Still, it seems that Marsalek is a frequent visitor to the FSB.
Photos support this finding. In order to protect the photographers, certain images obtained by DER SPIEGEL can only be described and not released publicly. They show Marsalek on several days of this year near FSB headquarters during normal office hours – well-dressed and apparently heading to his job as an agent.
But where does he live? It has proven impossible to glean a precise address from the data. The address on the western outskirts of Moscow included in the Nelidov passport data seems not to belong to him.
Marsalek’s existence as an agent in exile is far from glamorous. Rather, it is the life of a worker bee, and highly dangerous as well. It could be that the former top executive misses the luxury enjoyed in his past life. That might explain why Marsalek appears to frequently visit a hotel that aligns more closely with his former habits.
More consequential than such cosmetic concerns, however, appears to have been a trip to the war zone in Ukraine.
This is also suggested by a photo showing the former Wirecard executive in full military combat gear, complete with a helmet and a "Z” sewn onto his body armor, the emblem of the Russian war in Ukraine.
And there is also leaked information from Russian border guards hinting at additional trips taken by Marsalek to the front. One administrative system records border crossings, and on November 22, 2023, that system recorded the crossing of a certain Alexander Nelidov from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which is now occupied by Russia, into Russia. The image stored in the system is of Jan Marsalek.
Furthermore, he apparently travels frequently from Moscow to the Crimean Peninsula. It was possible to identify at least five train trips – grueling journeys, each taking 28 hours. One way.
A closer look at the passenger data makes it possible to see who Marsalek was traveling with, booked into the cabin next door. Lieutenant Kirill D., for example, a member of Spetsnaz, the Russian special forces. Were the two men comrades on their way to the war zone? It’s not unlikely, particularly given that Russian security sources have also reported that Marsalek has served in the war.
![Marsalek in full Russian combat gear, complete with a "Z" sewn onto the front of his uniform.](https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/4209d7a2-3268-4eb5-81ed-ab7d6f7c35cd_w520_r1.3149243918474687_fpx37.21_fpy44.98.png "Marsalek in full Russian combat gear, complete with a "Z" sewn onto the front of his uniform.")
Marsalek in full Russian combat gear, complete with a "Z" sewn onto the front of his uniform.
[M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: DER SPIEGEL
From a distance, it is impossible to provide an answer to such questions that would hold up in court. Particularly not for German criminal investigators and intelligence services. Germany’s Federal Prosecutor General, to be sure, is officially investigating Marsalek for espionage activities. And criminal investigators in Munich along with the Federal Criminal Police Office have been trying for years to bring him into custody. But when it comes to Marsalek’s activities in Russia, police officers and intelligence agents alike are largely blind.
The tools available to them are simply too limited. The police force’s specialized investigators are at the cutting edge of crime-fighting in Germany. They go after murderers and other serious criminals, only taking on around 500 cases each year. But the case of RAF terrorist Daniela Klette, who had been on the run for decades, revealed the tools these specialists are forced to use. Journalists were apparently able to find the fugitive on Facebook using the facial recognition program PimEyes. German police officers, however, are still not allowed to use this software out of data protection concerns.
Instead, they have classic methods of policework available to them: They are allowed to listen in on unencrypted telephone conversations, which Marsalek almost never engages in. They are allowed to maintain surveillance on friends and relatives of the fugitive, who Marsalek apparently never visits. They are able to search through social media accounts, which Marsalek never uses. In short: They don’t have much of a chance in his case.
DER SPIEGEL has learned that law enforcement’s cooperation with German intelligence agencies has also been challenging. "They aren’t interested in the case,” a Bavarian investigator said in a confidential conversation.
The fact that Marsalek left for Belarus in summer 2020 and, from there, likely headed to Russia is something that German security officials learned from DER SPIEGEL. In a joint reporting project with the investigative platform Bellingcat and the "Insider,” DER SPIEGEL that year obtained data from Belarus’s entry register confirming that Marsalek had crossed the border. German intelligence had no access to the data.
But they also don’t seem to have made much of an effort. Marsalek, it was long said behind closed doors, is a white-collar criminal. Not necessarily a target for intelligence services.
Nevertheless, German authorities ultimately submitted a legal assistance request to Moscow. The reply came quickly: Russian authorities claimed to have no knowledge of Marsalek’s presence in the country. Berlin, Russia suggested, should ask in Kazakhstan, suggesting he may have been seen there. Since then, all judiciary-level interactions with Vladimir Putin’s realm have ground to a halt.
Not long after Marsalek’s escape, Wolfgang Schmidt, the chief of staff of the Chancellery at the time, tried to get Marsalek’s name added to a secret list. Berlin was hoping he would be extradited in exchange for Vadim Krasikov, the man who murdered a former Chechen commander in Berlin in 2019 and was sent to Moscow in exchange for opposition activists, a former U.S. soldier and the reporter Evan Gershkovich. But the Kremlin ignored the effort.
All that is now left to German officials is the hope that Marsalek might turn himself in should life as a fugitive become unbearable. Or that a globally circulated Interpol notice might finally yield results. "Maybe he’ll take a trip one day and be recognized,” says the official. "We can wait.”
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Such comments don’t exactly give the impression that a great effort is being made. Yet European authorities should be sufficiently motivated to put a stop to Marsalek’s activities. An espionage trial in the United Kingdom underscores just how dangerous he might be.
In March, the Central Criminal Court in London convicted a six-member group from Bulgaria for spying on Russia’s behalf between summer 2020 and February 2023. Scotland Yard’s investigations indicate that Jan Marsalek was the group’s mastermind and handler. According to investigators, he was working on behalf of the FSB, but also occasionally for the GRU, Russia’s military secret service.
The activities of a secret agent have likely never been as clearly documented as they were in this case. The primary perpetrator is a Bulgarian named Orlin Roussev, an old business contact of Marsalek’s from Wirecard. On Marsalek’s instructions, Roussev and other Bulgarian confidants assembled a group of at least six agents, based in London. Around 100,000 revealing text messages between him and Marsalek were later found on the Bulgarian’s confiscated mobile phone. In combination with additional investigations, numerous operations undertaken by the group of agents could be reconstructed.
In fall 2022, for example, the group conducted surveillance of a U.S. military base in Stuttgart. Shortly before expensive equipment was deployed in that effort, which would even have allowed for the surveillance of mobile phones, the agents’ link to Moscow broke off. British counterespionage agents had got wind of them, and in February 2023, police raided several apartments in England and arrested a number of Bulgarians.
According to court documents, a raid in the home of the group’s Bulgarian leader found 495 SIM cards, more than 200 telephones, 258 hard drives, 11 drones, 75 different passports and numerous listening devices, some of them hidden in everyday items like toys or neckties.
Several digital copies of falsified identification documents were also found. Including the Belgian passport issued to "Alexandre Schmidt” bearing Marsalek’s photo.
As chatlogs show, Marsalek seemed almost obsessed with getting his hands dirty on behalf of his Moscow patrons. "We have to kidnap someone and bring him back to Russia,” he wrote to his Bulgarian associate in September 2021. He was specifically interested in a former Russian security official who had fled to Montenegro. "It doesn’t matter if he dies by accident,” Marsalek continued, "but it would be better if he made it to Moscow.”
The attempted kidnapping was unsuccessful, and the former Russian official is today hiding at an unknown location. In accordance with Marsalek’s desires, however, the Bulgarian agents traveled to Montenegro in fall 2021 and spent weeks conducting surveillance on the former official. Direct support from Moscow, however, was necessary for the sensitive mission.
Chat data reveals that Marsalek’s team met a second, armed team of agents on site. The team was led by a shadowy FSB spy who is only referred to in the chats as "Red Sparrow.” It is extremely likely that Marsalek knows her well.
In summer 2020, an FSB expert helped the recently escaped Wirecard executive disappear – initially under a new identity as a Russian priest. And Marsalek received a newly issued Russian passport. DER SPIEGEL reported on the fake identity last year.
The passport files, which could be examined thanks to a leak, also included a memo identifying the person who had applied for the passport and who was authorized to pick it up. The name on the memo is Evgeniya Kurochkina, and a phone number is also included. According to leaked records, Kurochkina regularly called and traveled with an FSB agent from Moscow.
Evgeniya Kurochkina has provided her services to the FSB - and is apparently the woman who escorted Jan Marsalek into hiding in the Crimea Peninsula.
[M] Sarah Dillon / DER SPIEGEL; Fotos: DER SPIEGEL
The data also reveals that Kurochkina brought Marsalek to his hiding place on the Crimea Peninsula shortly after his escape from Germany and after receiving his new passport.
Not quite one-and-a-half years later, Kurochkina once again made her skills as an experienced intelligence agent available to Marsalek. According to chat data, the Bulgarian team tasked with carrying out the Montenegro kidnapping were expecting the arrival of "Red Sparrow” on December 28, 2021. According to Russian flight data, Evgeniya Kurochkina was booked on a flight from Moscow to the Balkans on December 28, 2021.
It is difficult to imagine that her trip, at exactly the same time agents were expecting the arrival of a woman with the codename "Red Sparrow,” was a coincidence. She would be exactly the right person for the job, as can be seen in a resume that she produced herself.
Accordingly, she had worked since 2006 as a personal driver and bodyguard for business leaders and for a former member of the Ukrainian government. Under special skills, the resume listed "hand-to-hand comba” and "training in handling firearms.” Private photos show Kurochkina undergoing training with a submachine gun.
Above all, though: The fit 41-year-old served as a bodyguard, driver and aide to Stanislav Petlinsky, Marsalek’s key contact within Moscow’s intelligence network.
Kurochkina may also be linked to the brutal killing in Berlin. On August 23, 2019, the former Chechen commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot to death in broad daylight in a Berlin park. The gunman was captured and it was determined that he had committed the murder on behalf of the FSB, using a Glock with a silencer for the shooting.
According to one leak, Kurochkina’s mobile phone number is saved on at least one Russian device under the heading "Glock modifier.” Travel data also shows that Kurochkina was in Berlin around the time the murder took place. She landed in Berlin-Schönefeld Airport at 6:10 p.m. 10 days before the shooting. A burner phone was apparently used to buy the ticket.
The Russian contract killer Vadim Krasikov, for his part, flew from Moscow to Paris on August 17 before then traveling onward to Berlin. One day later, on the evening of August 18, Kurochkina flew back to Moscow from Berlin.
An FSB weapons expert at the same time and place that an FSB contract killing took place. Might there be a connection?
Marsalek, Spiridonova, Kurochkina and Marsalek’s lawyer declined to respond to an extensive list of questions relating to our reporting.
What is certain is that Marsalek and his experienced team of Bulgarians identified other potential targets as well. Tops on the list were the investigative reporters Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, both of whom also participated in this reporting project.
Grozev spent years as the chief reporter for the investigative platform Bellingcat and now also works for DER SPIEGEL. In recent years, he has attracted attention with his reporting on crimes committed by Russian secret services.
Roman Dobrokhotov is editor-in-chief of the Russian investigative medium "The Insider.” He, too, is seen as an enemy by the Russian government and four years ago, he had to flee his homeland for Europe. Moscow has issued a warrant for his arrest.
Marsalek’s hired agents have repeatedly shadowed the journalists. In Vienna, they used cameras to conduct surveillance on Grozev and his family from an apartment they had rented across the street. Reports and files, including video footage, would regularly end up on the desks of Marsalek and his Moscow secret agent friends. According to leaked chatlogs, Marsalek and the Bulgarian team leader considered the possibility of kidnapping and detaining Grozev to gain access to his phone and laptop.
The men even chatted about the possibility of murdering the reporter. Using an axe for such a murder, Marsalek wrote in a message to the Bulgarian gang leader in December 2022, was too archaic. "Better is a sledgehammer, Wagner style,” a reference to the war crimes committed by the Russian mercenary force Wagner Group. But Marsalek ultimately discarded the idea of murdering Grozev. It would likely only lead to problems, he told the gang leader. The plot was ultimately discovered by MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, and became an important factor in the London trial.
According to British court documents, Marsalek paid a pretty penny for the Bulgarian gang’s work. Between 2021 and 2023, the equivalent of 100,000 euros are thought to have been paid by Marsalek to Roussev, the Bulgarian – disguised through accounts belonging to shell companies. At least some of the money came from the Russian secret service. But where did the rest originate?
The Wirecard scandal is first and foremost a finance scandal. Wirecard, which grew to become an international financial giant, was long considered to be the financial services provider of the future and, for a time, was more valuable even than Deutsche Bank. But under the executive Marsalek, the company constructed a system of opaque channels that was perfect for money laundering. Multi-billion-euro transactions for clients were processed outside of Wirecard, but the revenues were listed on the company’s balance sheet, and the supposed commission earnings were recorded in trustee accounts.
Which is why no one realized for quite some time that billions of euros in Wirecard funds were not actually in the accounts where they were supposedly held. That money still hasn’t been found today. Is it gone, or was it never there? Invented or funneled off into dark channels?
There are traces. They lead to Singapore. To Switzerland. To Scotland. And, of course, to Russia.
Cellphone records help identify what may be Marsalek’s bank of choice in Moscow. From FSB headquarters, it’s only a 10-minute taxi ride east to the city center, where a branch of Transkapitalbank is located. The U.S. Treasury Department has described the institution as the "heart” of Russia’s sanctions-evasion network. If there is expertise in concealing money flows, it can surely be found here.
A cell tower stands less than 60 meters from the bank. Between the end of January and the end of May 2024, Marsalek’s phone was registered there 103 times over a period of seven days.
The story of Jan Marsalek is far from over. One huge question remains to be answered: Where is the money?
