Vienna, nest of spies. As in the heyday of the Cold War, the capital of Austria saw the return of secret agents from around the world and their procession of suspicious deaths, related The world in 2010. The country is once again accused of being a den of Russian spies. The arrest on March 29 of Egisto Ott, a former secret agent, ignited the powder, as revealed The Insider. This former employee of the BVT Office renamed DSN (Directorate of National Security and Intelligence) specializing in monitoring extremism is suspected of having “systematically” provided information to Russia for remuneration, according to elements of the investigation cited by the Austrian press agency APA.
At the end of the police custody of Egisto Ott, whose arrest warrant contains almost 100 pages, the Vienna regional court ordered on April 1 his placement in pre-trial detention due to “risks of collusion and commission of a crime,” the spokesperson for the body, Christina Salzborn, told AFP.
The information came from Great Britain, where compromising messages were discovered in the context of a case involving five Bulgarians on trial for espionage. With Egisto Ott, double agents allegedly acted on behalf of the now world-famous Austrian Jan Marsalek, at the heart of the bankruptcy of the Bavarian payments company Wirecard. Untraceable since he fled Germany in June 2020, he is believed to be in Moscow under a false identity, protected by Russian intelligence services, according to international media investigations.
Smartphones fallen into the Danube
In detail, the British authorities seized written messages exchanged between Jan Marsalek and an alleged spy arrested in the United Kingdom. It emerges from these discussions that Egisto Ott would have – for remuneration – transmitted to Russia the data from the smartphones of three senior Austrian officials of the Ministry of the Interior. These devices, including that of chief of staff Michael Kloibmüller, fell into the water when a canoe capsized during an outing on the Danube, a source close to the matter told AFP. They were then repaired by a BVT technician before being entrusted to Egisto Ott. A laptop containing confidential documents was also reportedly handed over to Moscow.
The spy would also have used his old badge in 2022 to obtain from his administration the personal address of Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian journalist on the radar of Russian services, relieving The world. This investigator is at the origin of the numerous revelations of the investigation site of the NGO Bellingcat on the Novichok poisonings organized by the GRU, Russian military intelligence, in particular during the attempt to eliminate the ex-agent Sergei Skripal, in 2018, in the United Kingdom.
Egisto Ott was previously suspended from his functions in 2017 and briefly arrested in 2021. He is in fact known to have been involved in several cases of corruption for more than ten years. As stated The world, his 2017 suspension was pronounced following information from allied services on how he had sold confidential information taken from Western databases to the Russians, for several tens of thousands of euros. Egisto Ott was cleared by the courts for these facts, then reinstated in another department of the Ministry of the Interior.
The FPÖ’s links with Moscow
“For us, the agents simply come from the police or the army” and some are tempted to turn their backs while in large Western countries, they are often trained in the best universities, explains Siegfried Beer to AFP , founder of the Viennese think tank ACIPSS, dedicated to intelligence. According to him, the transition to government from the far-right FPÖ party between 2017 and 2019 “did a lot of damage”.
The Austrian Freedom Party, long linked to Russia by an official cooperation agreement, had taken control of the Interior, a strategic ministry which had always eluded it before. He distinguished himself by a very controversial search by the intelligence services. Several Western services subsequently limited their exchange of information with Austria, for fear that it would be shared with Moscow. The head of Austrian diplomacy Karin Kneissl, for her part, invited Vladimir Putin to her wedding in 2018 and danced a waltz with him. Egisto Ott and other former Austrian service agents are all known to be close to the FPÖ.
Towards a tightening of anti-espionage legislation
After the arrest of this former Austrian secret agent, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer called on April 1 to strengthen the security of the Alpine country. Faced with these “serious accusations”, “it is necessary to assess and clarify the security situation in the Republic”, declared the conservative chancellor in a press release. “We must prevent Russian spy networks from threatening our country by infiltrating or exploiting political parties or networks,” he stressed, referring to the FPÖ. The chancellor, who acknowledged that the embarrassing affair constitutes “a national security problem”, convened a National Security Council on April 9.
A few months before the legislative elections, organized at the end of September, Karl Nehammer announced a tightening of the very permissive local anti-espionage legislation. As recalled by the Belgian media RTBFthe Austrian anti-espionage law only punishes espionage to the detriment of Austria but not of other countries or international organizations, while Vienna hosts many, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
The Minister of Justice, the ecologist Alma Zadic, who declared that she wanted to put an end to the image of her country as a “safe haven for spies”, promised to present a bill to increase the ceiling of sentences for espionage, currently set at a maximum of five years. The task promises to be difficult for Vienna. While Vladimir Putin has been waging a merciless war against Ukraine for two years, Russian moles are still operating in the country, according to a source close to the Austrian intelligence services interviewed by AFP. Despite its declared diplomatic neutrality, Austria therefore remains a target of choice for Moscow.