Austria brings legal case towards ex-official accused of spying for Russia

VIENNA (Reuters) -Former Austrian intelligence official Egisto Ott is dealing with a legal case, accused of corruption and spying for Russia by supplying an encrypted laptop computer and leaking delicate info for years, prosecutors mentioned on Friday.

Ott, who previously labored for the now defunct Federal Workplace for the Safety of the Structure and Counterterrorism (BVT), which was then Austria’s most important home intelligence company, was arrested in March 2024 on suspicion of spying.

Ott has denied all wrongdoing. His lawyer declined to touch upon Friday.

Vienna prosecutors mentioned in a press release they had been bringing a case towards Ott and an unidentified police officer, alleging offences together with working for or supporting an intelligence company to the detriment of Austria, bribery, misuse of workplace and breaching official secrecy.

The assertion mentioned Ott is accused, amongst different issues, of supporting an unspecified Russian intelligence company by “amassing secret info and a considerable amount of private knowledge from police databases between 2017 and 2021 for the aim of transmitting them to Jan Marsalek and unknown representatives of the Russian intelligence service”.

It added that Ott allegedly acquired cost in change.

Marsalek is the fugitive former chief working officer of German funds firm Wirecard that collapsed in scandal in 2020 owing collectors nearly $4 billion. Marsalek has been on the run since then. A London courtroom discovered this yr that he had run a hoop of Bulgarian spies in Britain working for Russia.

Ott can be accused of supplying, at Marsalek’s behest, a so-called SINA-S laptop computer, together with {hardware} utilized by European Union governments for safe communications, to an unknown particular person in change for 20,000 euros ($23,000). The laptop computer was then handed over to a Russian intelligence company, it added.

Allegations and proof have been mounting that Marsalek, who’s Austrian, orchestrated Russian spying actions in his dwelling nation and ran double brokers in its home intelligence service. Given his fugitive standing, no person is understood to signify Marsalek on this matter.

The problem additionally featured in final yr’s parliamentary election, with a number of events accusing the far-right Freedom Celebration (FPO) of being dangerously pro-Russia, which it denies.

The FPO got here first within the election however was unable to type a ruling coalition. The conservative Folks’s Celebration now leads a three-way coalition authorities with different centrist events.

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(Reporting by Francois MurphyEditing by Frances Kerry)