Jan Marsalek, the former COO of Wirecard who orchestrated a large fraud, had a grandfather named Hans Marsalek who was suspected of being a Russian spy during the postwar period in Austria. Hans was a resistance fighter against the Nazis but in 1956, Austrian authorities sent a letter saying there was "urgent suspicion" that Hans helped the Soviets kidnap and render at least four people, including an American intelligence agent, to the Soviet Union. While never convicted, documents show Hans was under suspicion of being a Soviet asset, which provides new context about Jan Marsalek's later fascination with intelligence matters and connections to Russia.

1. 20/3/23, 4:26 PM
Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy | Financial Times
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https://www.ft.com/content/ebbc0fab-9969-493a-815c-782085ca1651
Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s
grandfather was suspected Russian
spy
Austrian authorities linked anti-Nazi fighter Hans
Marsalek with kidnap and torture of four people in
postwar era
10 hours ago

2. 20/3/23, 4:26 PM
Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy | Financial Times
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https://www.ft.com/content/ebbc0fab-9969-493a-815c-782085ca1651
Hans Marsalek was a committed anti-Nazi resistance fighter during the second world war
Since 2020, European intelligence agencies have been desperately trying
to assess whether Jan Marsalek, the suave and enigmatic mastermind of
the Wirecard fraud, was also an agent of Russia’s intelligence agencies.
A formerly secret document unearthed from Austria’s state archives may
now provide a missing piece of the puzzle.
Jan Marsalek’s grandfather, Hans Marsalek — a committed anti-Nazi
resistance fighter during the second world war — was suspected by

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Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy | Financial Times
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Austrian authorities of being a Russian spy at the height of the espionage
battle for geopolitical dominance in the ruins of postwar Vienna, a dark
and morally conflicted setting immortalised by Graham Greene in his novel
The Third Man.
“This is a vital piece of information,” said Thomas Riegler, an Austrian
historian of intelligence who found the document during his research, and
shared a copy with the Financial Times. “It sheds new light on Jan
Marsalek and indicates that his obvious fascination with intelligence stems
from his family history.”
Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of Wirecard, was revealed by
the FT in 2021 to be under scrutiny from western intelligence agencies,
who suspected him of being a Russian spy.
Marsalek held court with a cast of known Russian intelligence operatives,
bribed and corrupted officials in Austrian intelligence and the military, and
was embroiled in outlandish projects in the Middle East, working with
Russian mercenaries and attempting to recruit militias.
In the wake of the Wirecard collapse, Marsalek fled his native Austria on a
private jet bound for Minsk, Belarus. His current whereabouts are
unknown, but officials from two European intelligence agencies told the
FT they had high confidence that he was in Moscow.

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Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy | Financial Times
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Hans Marsalek was the director of the Mauthausen Memorial © MKOE
Marsalek’s motivations and exact significance for Russia — and for
Wirecard — remain unclear, however.
He was a boastful and volatile figure who often flaunted his connections to
the secret world, and his activities were often geared around his own self-
enrichment. Before Wirecard’s collapse the FT received a tip that he
wanted to try to co-opt FT journalists and pass them highly classified
documents containing the chemical formula for novichok, the Russian
nerve agent.
At Wirecard, he was the central figure responsible for organising the huge
fraud — the largest in German history — that underpinned the company’s
rise to prominence and near takeover of Deutsche Bank.

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Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy | Financial Times
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https://www.ft.com/content/ebbc0fab-9969-493a-815c-782085ca1651
Recommended Much of Marsalek’s family background
remains a mystery. His father left when
he was a child, and in adult life
Marsalek was estranged from his
mother.
Hans, his paternal grandfather, lived a
long life. He died in December 2011,
when Jan was 31 — one year into his role as Wirecard’s chief operating
officer.
No convictions against Hans were ever brought. He died as a celebrated
hero, who had, among other things, helped Austrian police track down
Nazi officials after the war.
He was a committed socialist, however, and by the 1950s, as the cold war
began, Austrian authorities had already begun, in secret, to suspect his
allegiances.
A document from September 1956 lays some of them bare.
A letter from the head of Vienna’s political police to the city prosecutor
and the minister of the interior says there is an “urgent suspicion” that
Hans Marsalek was a Soviet asset.
More explicitly, it says there are grounds to suspect that he was
responsible for helping the Soviets kidnap at least four people and illegally
render them back to Moscow for torture, interrogation and imprisonment.
Among them was an American intelligence agent.

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Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy | Financial Times
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https://www.ft.com/content/ebbc0fab-9969-493a-815c-782085ca1651
A letter from the head of Vienna’s political police to the city prosecutor and the minister of the interior says
there is an ‘urgent suspicion’ that Hans Marsalek was a Soviet asset
“Hans was a resistance fighter who had been arrested and interned in
Mauthausen concentration camp. From 1945 on, he served as a high-
ranking officer of Vienna state police, engaged in intelligence matters. He
hunted Nazi war criminals after 1945,” said Riegler. This was a CV that put
him above reproach in the eyes of many Austrians.
But, Riegler added, there were “serious suspicions against him”
.
“He denied everything and he continued to serve in the police until 1963.
Afterwards he earned great merits as the director of the Mauthausen
Memorial, a position he filled until his retirement in 1976.”
The suspicions against Hans Marsalek, Riegler pointed out, were not
proof. By the 1950s, after the Soviets had formally pulled out of eastern
Austria, a backlash was under way in the Austrian state against left-
leaning officials.
Regardless, Riegler noted, as Hans Marsalek’s chequered biography

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Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek’s grandfather was suspected Russian spy | Financial Times
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makes clear, that the secret world was undoubtedly a big presence in Jan
Marsalek’s upbringing, offering a tantalising clue as to what drove his
fascination with it in later life.