Exclusive
As of: 7/7/2022 6:01 p.m
An Austrian secret service agent is suspected of having investigated numerous people through illegal data queries. Now it is determined whether information flowed to Russia. A trail leads to Germany.
It’s been five years since the suspicion first arose. In January 2017, the US secret service CIA contacted the Federal Office for Counter-Terrorism and the Protection of the Constitution (BVT), Austria’s domestic intelligence agency. The Americans warned that there was an “outflow of information” from the service, someone was passing on secret documents. They also named one suspect: Egisto O.
The former police officer from Carinthia had come a long way in BVT. He was a secret service liaison officer in Rome and later in Istanbul. Possibly, so the investigators suspect, O. came into contact with the Russian secret service there. In any case, today the Vienna public prosecutor is investigating the 60-year-old on suspicion of betraying official secrets.
Does O. have a whole network of contacts?
The investigators are investigating the suspicion that O. has researched numerous people through official databases and has partially sold the information. One of the clients is said to have been the fugitive Wirecard manager Jan Marsalek. O. denies any allegations and assumes an intrigue against him. At the alleged time of the crime, he no longer had access to the BAT databases.
After research by WDR, “SZ”, “Tagesanzeiger” and “Die Presse”, the Austrian investigators are now investigating whether O. might not have used an entire network of contacts and former colleagues abroad. It’s about officials and private investigators. The traces lead to Switzerland, Italy, Turkey and Germany, among other places.
Former intelligence officer targeted
In the past few months, the Viennese investigators have sent several requests for mutual legal assistance to European countries. One of them is aimed at the Koblenz public prosecutor’s office, as a spokesman for the authority confirmed. In it, the Austrians ask for the hearing of a witness who lives in Rhineland-Palatinate. The trail is explosive because it is about a former employee of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
The man has been retired for a few years and previously worked for many years at the BfV headquarters in Cologne-Chorweiler, including as head of department. The Austrian investigators want to clarify the relationship between the former constitutional protection officer and O. and whether he may have helped him obtain information from official databases.
From chats that could be secured on confiscated mobile phones from O., it should be clear that the Austrian and the German ex-constitutional officer apparently maintained a friendly and collegial relationship. The German is said to have been stored in O.’s cell phone with his date of birth and three telephone numbers.
Did O. get confidential data in Germany?
The case is currently causing a stir in the protection of the constitution. First of all, the service tried to clarify how the former employee and O. could have known each other and what access to databases the German contact had before his retirement. When asked, the BfV did not want to comment on the matter.
In the meantime it seems clear that the constitutional protection officer and O. probably had to do with each other professionally in the past. They are said to have attended joint courses and been employed in similar areas. A personal contact is therefore quite understandable, it is said. The question of whether O. used his contacts in Germany to obtain confidential information has not yet been clarified.
O. kept documents of foreign secret services
In the course of the investigation, the Austrian investigators came across several documents from foreign services, including letters from the British MI5, the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Pakistani secret service, which O. had probably emailed and kept without permission. For training purposes only, he says.
The investigators also found that O. was apparently interested in more than 300 people, did some research and created some dossiers. It is said to be mainly about data queries in official systems, which are said to have taken place without any recognizable official reason. Among the people O. was probably interested in were numerous representatives from politics, business and also from the secret service milieu.
The documents also contain the name of Bernd Schmidbauer, the former German secret service coordinator under Helmut Kohl. But Andreasbang, a Russian spy who had acted as a so-called “sleeper agent” in Germany for years, is also noted. The name of Christo Grozev, a researcher for the Bellingcat disclosure platform, which has repeatedly uncovered machinations by the Russian secret services, also appears in chat messages.
Did O. pass on explosive material to Russia?
Within the European security authorities, the Causa O. continues to cause displeasure. Austria’s domestic secret service is still not fully integrated into the communication system of European services, and there is hardly any exchange on espionage issues. There is great concern that the former secret service agent could possibly have gotten explosive material into the wrong hands. Maybe even to the Russian secret service. In this context, O. was also the focus of German investigators years ago.
In 2018, the Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe commissioned the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) with a “Russian Services” structural investigation to investigate the activities of Putin’s spies in Germany. The BKA then asked in Vienna whether there was any knowledge that certain information, which also relates to “the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany”, could have reached foreign authorities. At that time, the question was asked explicitly about O.