WSJ: Kremlin Agent, Who Fled To Belarus With Billions Of Euros, Reportedly Linked To Wagner

New details about the activities of Jan Marsalek have become known.

The top manager of the payment company Wirecard, Jan Marsalek, turned out to be, according to Western intelligence services, an agent of Russian intelligence.

The Wall Street Journal reports this.

In 2020, German payments company Wirecard declared bankruptcy. It turned out that 1.9 billion euros had disappeared from its accounts. Then Marsalek also disappeared. He flew on a private plane from Austria to Belarus, and then to Russia, where he now lives under a different name and under the protection of the FSB.

Marsalek used the company to illegally help the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service transfer money to finance covert operations around the world. Marsalek is also accused of helping the Wagner PMC.

The bankruptcy of Wirecard has become one of the most notorious economic scandals in German history over the past 80 years. The then German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her then deputy and head of the Ministry of Finance, Olaf Scholz, were witnesses in the parliamentary investigation into this case and gave evidence.

The head of Wirecard is in prison in Germany, but Marsalek managed to escape from the country. Later it turned out that the special services helped him in this. German justice demands the extradition of Marsalek, but Russia refuses.