Wirecard fugitive claimed he toppled Sebastian Kurz in messages to Russian spy

Jan Marsalek, the fugitive former Wirecard executive suspected by multiple countries of spying for Russia, claimed that he had helped to bring down Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, according to documents obtained by the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, of which POLITICO is a part. Marsalek said he had been involved in an operation that had “successfully toppled” Kurz, who stepped down amid corruption allegations in 2021. The messages, detailed in investigation files seen by the Telegraph and the Global Reporters Network, were sent to Orlin Roussev, a spy-ring leader who received instructions from Marsalek and has since been jailed in Britain for espionage. The documents contain no independent evidence of the role Marsalek says he has played in Kurz’s downfall. If substantiated, Marsalek’s claims would be a clear indicator of the Russian state interfering directly in the political leadership of an EU country. The Kremlin has long sought to sow division and destabilize governments across Europe, according to assessments by multiple security agencies. Marsalek is one of the world’s most wanted men and has been on the run since June 2020 when his company, German tech giant Wirecard, collapsed with a €1.9 billion hole in its books. Since his escape, he has been accused of working for the Kremlin for more than a decade while British police say he is involved in espionage on an “industrial” scale. He is wanted for fraud and is being investigated for spying in several European countries, including his native Austria. Kurz was the world’s youngest leader when he first became chancellor of Austria in 2017 at the age of 31. But his stratospheric rise, which saw him hold the post twice, was marred by corruption allegations, including that public money was used for political advertising on his behalf. When members of Marsalek’s spy ring, led by Roussev, were arrested in the U.K., police seized hundreds of thousands of messages detailing operations plotted from British soil. Some of these messages were shared with authorities, including Austrian officials, who are currently investigating whether their spies provided information to Marsalek and, in turn, to Russia. ‘Messy story’ One of the investigative files, examined by the Global Reporters Network, contains messages sent by a man whom authorities have identified as Marsalek, using the alias “Rupert Ticz,” on October 22, 2021. Marsalek mentions a “guy” who “was actually working for us for a while,” adding: “now he’s the victim of a witch-hunt by the team of the former chancellor.” He goes on to say that “we’ve successfully toppled” the former chancellor “by confiscating the mobile phone” of a friend of the then chancellor, who, according to Marsalek, was managing his “secret campaign financing.” Marsalek then shared a link to an article about the corruption allegations against Kurz and the phone which had been seized from one of the leader’s closest associates, Thomas Schmid, a former senior official in Austria’s Finance Ministry. Schmid’s phone had been seized in November 2019. The extensive communications recovered from the device subsequently became important evidence in several corruption investigations. In October 2021, prosecutors carried out raids involving Kurz’s government and his political party, the ÖVP, over allegations concerning the misuse of public money for politically favorable opinion polls and media coverage. Pressure from the investigation led to Kurz announcing that he was stepping down. Two weeks later, Marsalek wrote to Roussev that it was “quite a messy story”. Later in the conversation, he referred again to the political consequences of the information recovered from the phone, saying: “And the rest of the chats ‘killed’ the chancellor.” The documents contain no independent evidence that Marsalek actually organized the seizure of the phone. Russian ties Marsalek’s li