Austria faces its biggest espionage scandal in decades as the arrest of a former intelligence officer brings to light evidence of extensive Russian infiltration, lax official oversight and behavior worthy of a spy novel.Egisto Ott was arrested March 29. The 86page arrest...
VIENNA — Austria faces its biggest espionage scandal in decades as the arrest of a former intelligence officer brings to light evidence of extensive Russian infiltration, lax official oversight and behavior worthy of a spy novel.
Thomas Riegler, a historian and espionage expert affiliated with the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies, said the case has “the potential for one of the biggest espionage stories in recent Austrian history.” He was suspended from the BVT in 2017 when allegations emerged for the first time that he could be spying for Russia, but reassigned the following year to work for the Austrian police academy. In 2021, he was suspended pending further investigation into his alleged ties to Russia and taken into custody. Authorities concluded the evidence was too thin and released him about four weeks later.
Between 2017 and 2021, the Austrian warrant says, Ott collected sensitive information on people of interest to Russia “for the purpose of transmission to Jan Marsalek and to unknown representatives of Russian authorities" by conducting numerous searches in national police databases and making requests to other European police officers, including in Italy and Britain.
Five Bulgarian citizens who allegedly worked as part of a network with Marsalek were arrested last year in Britain and another in February. According to the Ott arrest warrant, chat messages between Marsalek and one of the suspects in that case, Orlin Roussev, that were seized by Britain's MI5 intelligence agency point to further operations by Marsalek and his Austrian helpers.
Prosecutors say the phones were given to an unknown agent working for Marsalek at the Vienna apartment of Ott's former son-in-law and “transferred to Moscow for further analysis.” They say the phones contained “sensitive official and private data.”
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