Former Austrian intel officer faces additional charges over alleged espionage for Russia

A former Austrian intelligence official is facing a criminal case, accused of corruption and spying for Russia by supplying an encrypted laptop and leaking sensitive information for years.

Egisto Ott, who formerly worked for the now defunct Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), which was then Austria's main domestic intelligence agency, was arrested in March 2024 on suspicion of spying.

This was published by Austrian prosecutors on August 29, according to Austrian media outlet Kurier. It notes that an unidentified police officer is also being charged, alleging offences including working for or supporting an intelligence agency to the detriment of Austria, bribery, misuse of office and breaching official secrecy.

The statement said Ott, who denies any wrongdoing, is accused, among other things, of supporting an unspecified Russian intelligence agency by "collecting secret information and a large amount of personal data from police databases between 2017 and 2021 for the purpose of transmitting them to Jan Marsalek and unknown representatives of the Russian intelligence service".

The case is linked to the highly publicized Wirecard scandal in Germany. Marsalek is the fugitive former chief operating officer of the German payments company that collapsed in 2020 owing creditors almost $4 billion. Marsalek has been on the run since then. A London court found this year that he had run a ring of Bulgarian spies in Britain working for Russia.

Ott is also accused of supplying, at Marsalek's behest, a so-called SINA-S laptop, including hardware used by European Union governments for secure communications, to an unknown person in exchange for 20,000 euros ($23,000). The laptop was then handed over to a Russian intelligence agency, it added.

By Nazrin Sadigova