Yan Marsalek, who fled to Russia, pretended to be a priest

Yan Marsalek, the former top manager of the Wirecard financial concern hiding in Russia, has been engaged in espionage for the benefit of the Russian special services for many years. After fleeing from German justice, he posed as an Orthodox priest. This was reported to Radio Liberty by the press service of the German TV channel ZDF, whose program team ZDF frontal conducted an investigation together with the German magazine Spiegel, the Austrian newspaper Standard and the website The Insider.

After Marsalek escaped from European justice in 2020, Russian special services helped him obtain fake documents. Journalists managed to obtain a copy of Marsalek’s passport, issued in the name of Russian Orthodox priest Konstantin Bayazov. In 2020, Marsalek presented this document in the annexed Crimea.

As the investigation showed, the priest named Konstantin Bayazov really exists. He lives in Lipetsk and outwardly resembles Marsalek, but their dates of birth do not match. Marsalek pretended to be Bayazov in order to be able to move. The passport, made in one of the Moscow branches, was taken by a woman working for the FSB. Together with her, Marsalek visited Crimea shortly after his escape from the EU. When ZDF frontal journalists tried to contact the real priest by phone, he replied: “I already told you that you, as journalists, must understand that we cannot talk to you.”

The investigation also showed that in 2014, Marsalek met Stanislav Petlynsky through his Russian friend Natalya Zlobina, who introduced him to the Russian GRU military intelligence. Zlobina, who previously worked as a porn model, was attached to Marsalek in order to recruit him to work for the Russian special services, journalists claim. In the summer of 2020, information about her was removed from the Russian database. Petlynskyi said during a meeting with journalists in Dubai that he had introduced Marsalek only to “some influential persons up to the Duma”, but not to employees of the special services.

Western security agencies, however, claim that they have information about Petlynsky’s cooperation with Russian special services. Petlynsky himself calls himself a “security advisor”. He confirmed that in 2017 he and Marsalek visited formations of PMC “Wagner” in Syria. In addition, Petlynsky, together with Marsalek, participated in the recruitment of Russian mercenaries for operations in Libya. Apparently, Marsalek used a network of companies under the guise of the Wirecard concern to buy the assets of the Russian company “RSB-Group”, which provides military mercenary services in various countries.

In the acts of the Austrian justice, it is indicated that Marsalek was a member of the “cell of the special services, giving them their opportunities and powers.” British prosecutors charge the top manager with the fact that he led an agent network in London that spied on citizens disagreeable to the Kremlin. Among them was, as it is claimed, Bellingcat investigator Hristo Grozev – who also investigated the activities of Marsalek.

Marsalek’s lawyer refused to comment to journalists.

In June 2020, the operational director of the Wirecard payment company Jan Marsalek fled abroad after the opening of a criminal case in connection with the revealed factors of fraud. Subsequently, The Insider, Bellingcat and the German media established that he had fled to Russia via Belarus and was apparently connected to the Russian special services.