exclusive
The ex-protection agent Egisto O. from Austria is said to have spied on people for Russia, including dissidents and renegade agents. In one case there was a break-in.
When Egisto O. was arrested in his home in Carinthia on Good Friday, it was not the first time that the former Austrian intelligence officer received a visit from the police. He was already searched in 2021. At that time, O. is said to have refused to hand over his cell phone to the investigators. Maybe it had something to do with the contents of the device.
The police found, among other things, a document on the iPhone that O. himself is said to have created shortly after a Russian contract killer shot a Georgian in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin in August 2019. The document is a kind of error analysis of the crime – and contains advice on how such a murder could be carried out more easily.
Egisto O. is now in custody. His case is making waves in Austria: The former employee of the Austrian domestic intelligence service BVT (now DSN) is suspected of having passed on explosive information to Russia for years in exchange for money. O. is also said to have acted on behalf of the fugitive Wirecard manager Jan Marsalek, who is said to be in Russia. O. always denied the allegations and claimed that there was an intrigue against him.
So far there has apparently not been enough evidence against Egisto O. However, the Viennese judiciary is now confident that it can provide proof of espionage for Moscow. This has, among other things, to do with thousands of chat messages that British authorities came across during investigations into a suspected spy ring that is said to have been controlled by Marsalek.
Vulnerable people spied on
WDR, “Süddeutscher Zeitung” and the Austrian magazine “Profil” have an arrest warrant against Egisto O. This shows that O. apparently spied on people specifically for Russian secret services. These include Russian dissidents, a former secret service agent from Moscow, and the researcher Christo Grozev, who has been exposing Russian secret service operations for years. The Viennese magazine Falter first reported on the arrest warrant.
O. is said to have made inquiries for personal information such as home addresses, vehicle license plates, passport details, hotel or flight bookings in Austrian and foreign authority databases or arranged for them to be requested by third parties. And without any apparent official connection and even at a time when he had long since been suspended from duty.
According to Austrian investigation results, Egisto O., for example, is said to have initiated several queries about Sergej N. (name changed). N. is a former employee of the Russian domestic secret service FSB who fled Russia and later received asylum in Montenegro. He is considered endangered.
O. is also said to have obtained information about a Russian ex-banker who left Russia in 2010 and has been living under state protection in Great Britain ever since. A member of the election commission in Moscow is also said to have spied on O. via Austrian databases.
Inquiries also abroad
In some cases, Egisto O. probably also enlisted former colleagues and acquaintances from home and abroad to gather information, including police officers from Italy, Croatia and Germany. According to the investigators’ findings, O. is said to have described some of the people spied on as alleged extremism or terrorism suspects in order to justify the queries he requested in foreign databases.
Some people were also questioned who were said to have a connection to Russian intelligence services, such as Stanislas P., a confidant of Jan Marsalek. The investigators suspect that these queries were intended to determine what information the European authorities had, for example whether there were arrest warrants or whether other searches were being carried out against these people in the Schengen area.
Burglary in Grozev’s apartment
The investigators consider a query that Egisto O. probably made himself to be particularly serious: about the researcher Christo Grozev, who is considered at risk due to his revelations. Although O. was already suspended at the time, he went to an Austrian residents’ registration office in March 2021 and asked for registration information about Grozev.
Since Grozev had a reporting ban due to his dangerous situation, O. as a private person should not have received any information about him. However, O. is said to have pretended to be a police officer and showed a badge that he should have handed in long ago, according to the arrest warrant.
More than a year later, in June 2022, there was apparently a break-in at the apartment of Christo Grozev and his partner in Vienna. The crime is said to have been orchestrated by a Bulgarian from Great Britain, who was apparently guided by Marsalek and has since been charged with espionage in London.
This Bulgarian is said to have written in a chat message that the “Seal Team” (a reference to a special unit of the US military) had successfully penetrated Grozev’s apartment and taken a laptop and USB sticks. Grozev no longer lives in Austria.
Mobile phones and laptops passed on
The Vienna public prosecutor’s office is now convinced that Egisto O. not only obtained information for Russia, but also passed on electronic devices with sensitive content – such as three official cell phones belonging to high-ranking officials in the Austrian Interior Ministry that were damaged in an accident.
In addition, in November 2022, O. is said to have organized the transfer of a so-called SINA laptop in exchange for a payment of 20,000 euros, which ultimately ended up with the Russian domestic secret service FSB in Moscow. Due to the special encryption, such devices are used by NATO, European police and intelligence services.
When the police searched Egisto O.’s house last week after his arrest, they found information from WDR, SZ and “Profil” found two more SINA laptops there. Their origin and content is still unclear.