In the photos relating to his past glory as a businessman, Jan Marsalek, 42, always appears in an impeccable suit, on which slips a slight smirk which makes him sympathetic, and ordinary in short. Far, very far, from the portrait of a Russian spy which is now widely portrayed before German courts and in the international press.
Originally, Jan Marsalek was the financial manager of the German company Wirecard. He rose through the ranks from his hiring in 2000, to becoming one of its main leaders ten years later. His former collaborators describe him as a handsome, “brilliant”, “well-mannered” and “lovable” man, who “had the world at his feet” and “lived on planes”. “He always separated work from private life,” confided to German MPs his personal assistant Sabine Heinzinger, who worked alongside him for seven years. “I don’t know anything about him.” Behind this smooth image, few details filter… Until 2020, when Wirecard goes bankrupt and is accused of being largely responsible.
Half crook, half spy
Wirecard is a German financial company, founded in the late 90s, whose trial for “fraud” opens this Thursday, December 8 in Munich. The company offered services in risk management, credit card production and transaction processing, particularly online, which was revolutionary for its time. If the company has long served as a payment intermediary for pornography and online games, it then experienced a meteoric rise with several thousand companies, managing to climb into the Dax index, the elite of the German stock exchange. But the success does not last. Wirecard went public in June 2020, after its executives admitted that 1.9 billion euros in assets, or a quarter of the size of the balance sheet, did not exist. The police investigation, opened after revelations from the FinancialTimes, revealed that Wirecard’s balance sheets for the years 2015 to 2018 had embellished the situation, to make the company attractive to investors. The bankruptcy of Wirecard caused its shareholders to lose some 20 billion euros in market capitalization and the creditor banks about 2 billion euros. Suspicions very quickly turned to financial manager Jan Marsalek, but the day after the scandal, the businessman had already evaporated.
Stunned, the investigators discover while looking for him the multiple facets of a man half-crook half-spy, probably on behalf of the Russians. He did not flee in a trunk, but aboard a private jet that he himself chartered with a helping hand from the Russian intelligence services (FSB). On June 18, 2020, the day after the Wirecard fraud revelations, Jan Marsalek indeed left a small airport in Austria to reach Belarus. He had, before, taken care to put the investigators and Interpol on the wrong track, making believe in a departure for the Philippines where he corrupted the immigration services so that they confirm his landing, then his departure for China. . “It was through the Austrian-Russian friendship group ÖRFG (an economic lobbying association between the two countries), that the businessman, originally from Austria, came into contact with the Russian intelligence services and was able to organize his flight and his disappearance”, specifies a their report.
Close ties with the Kremlin
But his links with Russia do not date from his exfiltration. The more the investigators go back the thread of his life, the more the trajectory of the businessman approaches the Kremlin. And finally, Jan Marsalek would have used the prestige of his position at Wirecard as a launching pad to multiply additional activities… often very far from finance. Lunch with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a helping hand to Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtasch, friendship with American porn baron Hamid Akhavan… his relations were iconoclastic. In the shadows, he spawned with spies: according to an Austrian seizure order consulted by Agence France Presse, he would have, from 2015, paid an intermediary to obtain “secret information” on a certain number of personalities.
Some of his actions intrigue and even worry those he meets over the years. This is the case of a professional meeting, which remained anonymous, which confided to AFP that in 2018, Jan Marsalek proudly exhibited a classified document obtained in Austria and including the formula of Novichok, a neurotoxic product that Moscow is accused of. of having used to try to eliminate opponents. The 40-year-old also boasted of having traveled to Palmyra, Syria, a few days after the recapture of the city with the Russian paramilitary group Wagner. Then, he would also have tried to set up a project with the militia, to stop in Libya the migrants wanting to go to Europe.
His collaborators at Wirecard, however, will have had a glimpse of some of his ambivalences. During business trips, for example, he always avoided the United States, saying he feared criminal proceedings without giving any reason. His secretary will also tell the investigators that he took care to leave his phone outside his office when he conducted confidential conversations. He was also the owner of a “splendid villa” in Munich… just opposite the Russian consulate.
Since his flight, neither the German authorities nor Interpol have succeeded in arresting him. He would be in Moscow today under a false identity, protected by the FSB, revealed a recent international journalistic investigation. On this opening day of the trial of the company Wirecard, of which he was the director of operations, Jan Marsalek is conspicuous by his absence and remains to this day the most wanted man in Europe.