Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's a winter's day in twenty eighteen. Paul Murphy
Speaker 1: is standing in front of the mirror of the gents
Speaker 1: lavatory at work. He's changing for lunch.
Speaker 2: Kind of stopped wearing ties, but I think I put
Speaker 2: a tie on for that occasion.
Speaker 1: Paul is in his mid fifties. He's got a slightly
Speaker 1: grizzled look about him. You wouldn't pick him out in
Speaker 1: a crowd, but that's an advantage in his line of work.
Speaker 1: In his hands, Paul is holding a small silver disc
Speaker 1: about the size of a penny. He takes his shirt off,
Speaker 1: grabs a piece of medical tape and fixes this disk
Speaker 1: onto his shoulder because this disc is a tiny microphone.
Speaker 1: He slips his white shirt back on, puts a jacket
Speaker 1: on top, and with one last glance in the mirror,
Speaker 1: he's ready for lunch. Paul is the head of investigations
Speaker 1: at the Financial Times in London. He takes a cab
Speaker 1: across town to Mayfair to a venue called forty five
Speaker 1: Park Lane.
Speaker 2: It's it's you know, it's one of those places that
Speaker 2: is priced to keep out to ordinary people.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's all glass windows and bling and mirrored interiors and
Speaker 2: very few customers, very few. It's Dubai style essentially. As
Speaker 2: Paul walks in, he tries to keep his cool. Despite
Speaker 2: four decades in journalism, this is a first for him.
Speaker 2: He's never actually worn a wire himself. It's very very
Speaker 2: nerve wrecking. You know, I've got a bug on me.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't want our undercover team to get discovered.
Speaker 2: That would be hugely embarrassing, so I was, you know,
Speaker 2: it's nervous.
Speaker 1: The maitre d escort's Paul across the room, and there,
Speaker 1: rising from his chair, smiling courteously and greeting poor with
Speaker 1: a handshake, is the man he's come to meet, jan Marcelek.
Speaker 2: Very slim, athletic build, razor sharp blue suit.
Speaker 1: Paul came here to set a trap to get this
Speaker 1: successful businessman on tape, but by the time they finished
Speaker 1: their meal, he wonders if he's the one who has
Speaker 1: walked into a trap.
Speaker 2: If I'm honest, I felt a bit amateurish. You know,
Speaker 2: we were out of our depth. This guy was very
Speaker 2: very slick, controlled, careful, polished, and you know I'm not.
Speaker 1: My name is Sam Jones, and I'm a journalist with
Speaker 1: the Financial Times. I'm a foreign correspondent based in Central Europe.
Speaker 1: This lunch you've just heard about. It's the unexpected beginning
Speaker 1: of an investigation that has, in one way or another
Speaker 1: preoccupied me for the past five years. At the center
Speaker 1: of it is the man in the sharp blue suit,
Speaker 1: Yan Marceilek, a man who I discovered is so fascinated
Speaker 1: by risk and deceit that one identity, one life wasn't
Speaker 1: enough for him. I find it's often people like this,
Speaker 1: the most unusual, people who reveal universal truths, the fact
Speaker 1: that we're all inventors of our own personal narratives, how
Speaker 1: fictions can be stitched together to create realities. This tale
Speaker 1: begins in London and Munich, but leaps across the globe,
Speaker 1: from Libya to Austria, from Bulgaria to Afghanistan, from the
Speaker 1: Court Azure to Moscow. Yan Marceles life is a window
Speaker 1: into a hidden world of geopolitical power games, games which
Speaker 1: in ways big and small, govern our lives, Games which
Speaker 1: have never felt more relevant or the players of them
Speaker 1: harder to fathom. This is a story about espionage, about Europe,
Speaker 1: about Russia, and ultimately America. From the Financial Times and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. This is Hot Money Season three, Agent of Chaos,
Speaker 1: Episode one, The Bride. Paul Murphy hired me to work
Speaker 1: for the Ft seventeen years ago. It's been a long
Speaker 1: time since Paul's my actual boss, but he was and
Speaker 1: still is a mentor to me. All of my best
Speaker 1: habits in journalism and some of my worst ones I've
Speaker 1: picked up from Paul too much since starting my career.
Speaker 1: Every couple of months or so, I end up at
Speaker 1: lunch with him in Sweetings. It's a noisy, crowded fish
Speaker 1: restaurant deep in the city, London's financial district. It's distinctly
Speaker 1: old school. Even a bowler hat wouldn't look out of place,
Speaker 1: and coming here it underscores less than number one in
Speaker 1: the Paul Murphy school of journalism, you.
Speaker 2: Have to get out of the bloody office, get out
Speaker 2: of the bloody arfis. Young reporters in particular think that
Speaker 2: you can do everything digitally, but actually you get a
Speaker 2: lot more information of somebody face to face. You'll have
Speaker 2: to win people's trust, and one way of doing that
Speaker 2: is have lunch with people. It's a great social setting
Speaker 2: to develop a relationship with somebody who you need them
Speaker 2: to trust you.
Speaker 1: I want to paint a bit of a picture for
Speaker 1: you about Paul, because it pays in this story to
Speaker 1: try and get the measure of people's character, or at
Speaker 1: least to try and understan and the version of themselves
Speaker 1: people present to the world, and why Although Paul spends
Speaker 1: a lot of time at lunch, he's definitely not just
Speaker 1: another city soak. Most people tend to miss the little
Speaker 1: silver ring he's wearing a skull designed by his daughter.
Speaker 1: People miss a lot about Paul, but that's part of
Speaker 1: the trick. He's very good at being underestimated, and because
Speaker 1: of that, he's also very good at getting people to
Speaker 1: trust him, to talk to him, and to give him information.
Speaker 1: To understand why I was drawn into this story, you
Speaker 1: need to know a bit about the reporting that was
Speaker 1: dominating Paul's life. Back in twenty eighteen, he and his
Speaker 1: star reporter Dan McCrumb were neck deep investigating a German
Speaker 1: company called Wirecard, a company that was run by the
Speaker 1: man in the razor sharp blue suit, the man whom
Speaker 1: Paul would eventually meet for lunch in Mayfair. Jan Marcelek
Speaker 1: Wacard ran the financial plumbing behind billions of online transacts.
Speaker 1: It was so successful at that point, it was even
Speaker 1: secretly plotting a takeover of Germany's biggest bank. So to
Speaker 1: the world, Warkard was a booming digital payments company. To
Speaker 1: Paul and his reporter Dan, Warkard was a huge fraud,
Speaker 1: and they were well on the way to proving it.
Speaker 1: But it was no normal fraud because for months, Paul
Speaker 1: and Dan they suspected they'd been under intense surveillance, all
Speaker 1: directed by someone at Warkard from its base in southern Germany.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's kind of like, almost sounds silly to
Speaker 2: recount it, but you know, we were paranoid about being
Speaker 2: followed around London. We would get on and off tube
Speaker 2: trains quickly, just in case somebody was getting on the
Speaker 2: same tube trainer as us. We would turn off our
Speaker 2: phones so that a location couldn't be tracked.
Speaker 1: Dan had already had his emails hacked and some of
Speaker 1: them leaked online. It was an attempt to embarrass and
Speaker 1: discredit him. There had been a mounting and seemingly coordinated
Speaker 1: attack on his reputation on social media. When Paul told
Speaker 1: me all of this over a series of lunches at Sweetings,
Speaker 1: I guess he was doing so because he wanted to
Speaker 1: know if I had any contact in private intelligence or
Speaker 1: even in the actual intelligence services, people who might be
Speaker 1: able to help, because the subject I really write about,
Speaker 1: the subject that has become my specialism at the FT
Speaker 1: is spying. Paul was probably also telling me out of
Speaker 1: frustration because back then he and Dan had hit a
Speaker 1: bit of a wall in their reporting. They'd published all
Speaker 1: they could about Warkad based on the evidence they had
Speaker 1: gathered so far, but they still didn't have a smoking gun,
Speaker 1: and Wakard's aggressive lawyer's shillings had meanwhile come down hard
Speaker 1: on them. Dan had only just avoided a ruinous lawsuit.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a great time. It was this sense that
Speaker 1: what have we got ourselves into? That was like a
Speaker 1: real low moment. Maybe I've got myself into a bit
Speaker 1: too much hot water here. You do start to worry
Speaker 1: what you've sort of brought down on your family. It
Speaker 1: was quite oppressive. There was this turning point for Dan.
Speaker 1: One of his sources rang him up to tell him
Speaker 1: he'd been roughed up on the street by two thugs
Speaker 1: right outside his children's school. They demanded to know if
Speaker 1: this source had passed on confidential information about wirecard. Hearing
Speaker 1: this sent Dan into a bit of a tailspin because
Speaker 1: suddenly he was worrying about the safety of his own family.
Speaker 3: My first thing was I sort of go home and
Speaker 3: obsessively change every single one of my passwords, start checking
Speaker 3: all the security on my house. I mean, the worst
Speaker 3: moment is we had just moved into this rented house
Speaker 3: and I suddenly realized I haven't checked the lock on
Speaker 3: this patio door at the back of the house, which
Speaker 3: we'd never used, and it just slides straight open like
Speaker 3: our house had essentially been unlocked for the last couple
Speaker 3: of months. And at that point I really did start
Speaker 3: freaking out about security who might be after us, and
Speaker 3: I basically became really paranoid.
Speaker 1: It was right at the peak of this paranoia that
Speaker 1: something even stranger happened, something that led to that lunch
Speaker 1: at forty five Park Lane, Paul was talking to one
Speaker 1: of his oldest sources.
Speaker 2: And we got onto the subject of wire Card, just
Speaker 2: a completely, you know, innocent, relaxed conversation, and this guy
Speaker 2: just suddenly said, you know that they'll pay you a
Speaker 2: lot of money to stop writing about them, and I
Speaker 2: kind of laughed, and he stopped me and said, no,
Speaker 2: they will pay you ten million dollars to stop writing
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you work in the kind of
Speaker 1: job or live the kind of life where you've ever
Speaker 1: been bribed, But even as a journalist for the ft,
Speaker 1: this doesn't really happen, let alone for such a ridiculous
Speaker 1: sum of money, I mean, for ten million dollars, what
Speaker 1: would you do? And as such, it takes Paul a
Speaker 1: while to realize that this is a serious offer. How
Speaker 1: do you know this? He asks? Through my son, His
Speaker 1: source tells him He's got to know someone at Warkard
Speaker 1: pretty well. They've been out together a few times carousing.
Speaker 1: He's called Jan Marcelek, and then Paul's Saurce. He says
Speaker 1: something which makes Paul clock that this offer is real.
Speaker 1: Marceilek is paying this guy more than two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars just to convey the message. You should meet him
Speaker 1: for lunch, he suggests. So what does Paul say, Tell
Speaker 1: me when, and tell me where. Paul has no intention
Speaker 1: of taking the bribe, but this back channel offer, it
Speaker 1: seems to confirm everything they suspect about Wirecard.
Speaker 2: Absolutely confirmed all our suspicions, such.
Speaker 1: Were that the company is a criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2: Absolutely this was kind of tangible evidence.
Speaker 1: All they need now is for mass elect to offer
Speaker 1: the bribe himself and to get that on tape. It's
Speaker 1: time for the FT to mount its own surveillance operation.
Speaker 1: So that day at forty five Park Lane, the formal
Speaker 1: introduction's over, it's time to order stakes, the overpriced speciality
Speaker 1: of this place around one hundred and seventy pounds for
Speaker 1: a six ounce filet mignon. Right from the start, though,
Speaker 1: Paul begins to feel that mars Leg isn't quite what
Speaker 1: he was expecting. Paul is on edge, but he's not alone.
Speaker 1: To his relief, it's not long before he spots his
Speaker 1: undercover support team, three FT colleagues who pose as wealthy ladies,
Speaker 1: catching up over lunch. They snagged a table just next
Speaker 1: to him, and they look pretty convincing. One of the
Speaker 1: reporters places her handbag on the back of a chair.
Speaker 1: Hidden inside, a camera films the lunch at an angle,
Speaker 1: catching Yan Marceilek in profile. You can hear the tenor
Speaker 1: of his voice, but the background noise means it's impossible
Speaker 1: to make out his words to me. Watching this footage back,
Speaker 1: it's striking how animated he is. He turns from side
Speaker 1: to side, addressing everyone at the table. As he talks,
Speaker 1: his face lights up. He's sort of holding court, emphasizing
Speaker 1: his words with expansive hand gestures. He almost looks like
Speaker 1: a politician. The longer the conversation goes on like this,
Speaker 1: the more clear it becomes to Paul that Marcelek is
Speaker 1: the one in control. This guy is expansive and engaging, charming,
Speaker 1: but not at all defensive. There's no trace of anger
Speaker 1: or guilt or care. He gently protests about the FT's
Speaker 1: unfair coverage of Wakade, as if it's been an inconvenience,
Speaker 1: but his whole toe seems to be saying, let's put
Speaker 1: this behind us. As they settle into the meal, Paul
Speaker 1: nudges the conversation into more dubious terrain. You get to
Speaker 1: get something incriminating, even if it's just a hint of
Speaker 1: something on tape and on camera.
Speaker 2: I certainly talked about the kind of the aggression that
Speaker 2: the business had shown us, and we also talked about
Speaker 2: where the journalists were corrupt, and he absolutely assured me
Speaker 2: that he knew that journalists could be bought. I remember saying,
Speaker 2: we don't take bribes and remember him very specifically saying,
Speaker 2: I know that, Paul, I know you don't have seen
Speaker 2: evidence that you don't take bribes, And I thought, Hugh,
Speaker 2: you've seen my bank account. I remember the kind of
Speaker 2: jolting that he was kind of like stating this so openly.
Speaker 1: But the conversation continues in this vein nothing concrete, the
Speaker 1: killer offer of a bribe Paul had been hoping for. Well,
Speaker 1: it's clear that Marceilek is far too savvy an operator
Speaker 1: to make it. Here and now at their first meeting.
Speaker 2: Pretty quickly, you know, came to the conclusion that I
Speaker 2: wasn't going to be offered a bribe in front of
Speaker 2: these people.
Speaker 1: A bit of a damp squip in a way, yes,
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Paul is now left wondering what does Marcelek want from him?
Speaker 1: Why has this meeting happened if he's not actually going
Speaker 1: to make him some kind of offer. The lunch lasted
Speaker 1: about ninety minutes, and at the end Marcelek insisted on
Speaker 1: paying and.
Speaker 2: Pulled out a gold credit card, a novelty credit card
Speaker 2: of solid gold.
Speaker 1: Was he a bit of a show off?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, you know, we're in one of the most
Speaker 2: expensive restaurants in London, eating kind of two hundred quid steak,
Speaker 2: and he was paying for the bill with a gold
Speaker 2: credit card. So yeah.
Speaker 1: As Paul leaves the restaurant, he almost laughs at himself
Speaker 1: for having thought he'd be heading back with something explosive,
Speaker 1: But he also realizes that this experience actually hasn't been
Speaker 1: a busted flush. Far from it. Meeting Yan Marcelek has
Speaker 1: only intrigued Paul Moore. It's put him into three D.
Speaker 1: There's something about mars Lec he can't quite put his
Speaker 1: finger on.
Speaker 2: I felt I'd met somebody who was very controlled and confident,
Speaker 2: who was almost certainly corrupt. I basically said, can we
Speaker 2: do that again? And indeed Paul does meet with him again.
Speaker 2: That's coming up after the break. When Paul first started
Speaker 2: telling me about Wacard, I think I treated it all
Speaker 2: as entertaining table talk. Paul is a great teller of story,
Speaker 2: and I always enjoyed hearing the gossip about what his
Speaker 2: investigations team was up to. After he told me about
Speaker 2: meeting Marcelek, though, something began to needle at me, just
Speaker 2: a feeling about what kind of person Marslek was. A
Speaker 2: feeling I couldn't pin down until I heard about the
Speaker 2: second lunch. One month after that lunch at Park Lane,
Speaker 2: Paul met Marcelek again, this time without undercover colleagues or
Speaker 2: secret cameras. It was just the two of them. They
Speaker 2: met at the Lanesborough, another high end hotel in London.
Speaker 2: We talked about geopolitics, We talked about technology, we talked
Speaker 2: about finance, you know, we talked about the state of
Speaker 2: the world. He had interesting opinions and information on all
Speaker 2: these things. If I'm honest, at this stage, I I'd
Speaker 2: become fascinated by this character because he seemed to know
Speaker 2: so many people, and I kind of I was thinking,
Speaker 2: will you know, he's probably not going to offer me
Speaker 2: a bribe. We're not going to just catch him. He's
Speaker 2: not that stupid. This guy is smart and he knows
Speaker 2: people and he has information.
Speaker 1: At this point, did it occur to you that he'd
Speaker 1: charmed you in any way?
Speaker 2: Yes, it did, but he was a charming man.
Speaker 1: Did you like him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I liked him.
Speaker 1: If wire Card, if you hadn't have known it to
Speaker 1: be a fraud, do you think you would have sought
Speaker 1: to stay in touch with him?
Speaker 2: I absolutely, absolutely. I mean in actual fact, you know
Speaker 2: my thinking after that second lunch I did. I actually thought,
Speaker 2: I'm going to you know, develop this guy as a source.
Speaker 1: What did you think he was hoping to get out
Speaker 1: of a relationship with you?
Speaker 2: Actually, it was very clear we posed an existential risk
Speaker 2: to wire Card. He knew that by you know, building
Speaker 2: a relationship directly with me, that he could potentially stop
Speaker 2: as writing about them, or at least he'd get the
Speaker 2: kind of intel in advance about what we were thinking.
Speaker 1: So, as Paul tells me about all of this, the
Speaker 1: feeling I get most is that a game is afoot,
Speaker 1: and both Paul and Marcelek are enjoying playing it. They've
Speaker 1: both established rapport, they're both working to build trust, but
Speaker 1: they also test each other, push, try to implicate each
Speaker 1: other in this polite conversation. And all of this grips
Speaker 1: me because in it I see so much of the
Speaker 1: kind of psychology that I've spotted glimpses of covering intelligence
Speaker 1: and espionage. I recognize the shape of this kind of interaction,
Speaker 1: a certain amused, matter of fact detachment from things. Despite
Speaker 1: the stakes about it, Marcelek is launching happily with a
Speaker 1: man who is trying to destroy the company he works
Speaker 1: for and put him in jail. And Paul well, in
Speaker 1: a funny way, Paul is being encouraged into a minor transgression,
Speaker 1: something that almost felt to me like a textbook trick
Speaker 1: from an intelligence recruitment manual, an indiscretion that might later
Speaker 1: make you vulnerable. Because Paul does all of this works
Speaker 1: Marcilek behind the back of the lead reporter on the
Speaker 1: Wirecard Project, Dan McCrum. Why were you dealing with Marcelec
Speaker 1: and not Dan.
Speaker 2: Dan and I are different characters. Dan is a guy.
Speaker 2: You know, he's tall, and he has all his features
Speaker 2: in the right place. And if your daughter brought him
Speaker 2: home as a boyfriend, you'd be really happy. You know,
Speaker 2: he's a good guy. He's intelligence, he's articulate, he's well educated.
Speaker 2: But actually, actually, but actually Dan is lethal. Dan's like
Speaker 2: kind of smiling axe man. He's dangerous, he's friends. Yes,
Speaker 2: he's absolute forensic and he won't let it lie. And
Speaker 2: you know I have a different style, all right. I'm
Speaker 2: much softer and you know, chat people up, and you
Speaker 2: know I present myself as being very kind of clubbable.
Speaker 2: Do you know all journalists have different styles.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you're probably more comfortable playing a
Speaker 1: role as well.
Speaker 2: No, possibly yes.
Speaker 1: Reading between the lines, I think probably A doubting part
Speaker 1: of him was also wondering whether the Warquard investigation was
Speaker 1: at a dead end. The threat of a lawsuit from
Speaker 1: Shillings meant their reporting had stalled, and if that was
Speaker 1: the case, it might be worth Paul pursuing Marcelek as
Speaker 1: a source of his own, someone who could help him
Speaker 1: with other stories. Then, around six months after that second meeting,
Speaker 1: Paul gets a call from an intermediary. Marcelect conveys that
Speaker 1: he has something very interesting to offer documents. He hints
Speaker 1: at what they're about, and it sounds outlandish, but it's
Speaker 1: enough of a hint that Paul agrees to marcele X's
Speaker 1: suggestion that he fly out to Munich, where Marcelek lives,
Speaker 1: in order to get them.
Speaker 2: I kept it completely private. Only just a managing editor
Speaker 2: at that dft knew what I was doing.
Speaker 1: They meet at the Kiefer Schenka. It's a Munich institution,
Speaker 1: patrician reassuringly expensive, white tablecloths paneled rooms, but warm and
Speaker 1: efficient service, and it's practically Marcelec's house restaurant yand.
Speaker 2: Was waiting for me outside. We went in. We had
Speaker 2: a little private room. I remember having salmon with Caviat.
Speaker 1: And as they talked, Marcelec pushed a brown folder full
Speaker 1: of papers across the table towards Paul.
Speaker 2: Because it's in a restaurants, I couldn't pull them out
Speaker 2: and start reading through them. I just had to kind
Speaker 2: of politely say, thank you very much, I'll have a
Speaker 2: read of those. And then we just had a kind
Speaker 2: of stilted, awkward lunch conversation. We talked about his bad back.
Speaker 2: If I'm I'm honest, I was trying to get out
Speaker 2: of the lunch as quickly as possible because I wanted
Speaker 2: to see what was in the folder.
Speaker 1: They finished lunch, Marcelex said he had to go back
Speaker 1: to the office.
Speaker 2: The restaurant has lots of kind of separate bars and rooms,
Speaker 2: and so I literally went down some stairs and found
Speaker 2: myself a little corner and sat down and opened the folder.
Speaker 1: These documents they related to something that happened in the
Speaker 1: UK that spring, something awful which had shocked the whole country.
Speaker 3: Yesterday afternoon, passers by noticed two people apparently unconscious on
Speaker 3: a bench in Salisbury, the area of the Salisbury poisonings.
Speaker 3: As a police presence remains here in the city whilst
Speaker 3: they investigate. Residents and visitors to the city have been
Speaker 3: reacting to the news.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just completely surprised and shocked that something can happen
Speaker 5: like this in Salisbury.
Speaker 1: An assassination attempt against a former spy using one of
Speaker 1: the deadliest nerve agents ever created a chemical that only
Speaker 1: a handful of government specialists knew about, Novichok two thirty four.
Speaker 1: The spy was found half dead alongside his unconscious daughter,
Speaker 1: but thanks to some remarkable medical work, they both survived.
Speaker 1: Another local resident, a mother of three, did not. She
Speaker 1: died after coming into contact with the novichok. It had
Speaker 1: been hidden by the assassins in a perfume bottle. The
Speaker 1: intended target was soon identified as a Russian intelligence officer
Speaker 1: who had fled to Britain. In twenty ten, Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Theresa May announced to a shocked parliament that Moscow was
Speaker 1: to blame.
Speaker 5: The government has concluded that the two individuals named by
Speaker 5: the police and CPS are officers from the Russian Military
Speaker 5: Intelligence Service, also known as the GRU.
Speaker 1: The GRU the main directorate Russia's fearsome military Intelligence Agency,
Speaker 1: an organization with goals that should have consigned it to
Speaker 1: Cold War history. Misinformation, civil disorder, violence, assassinations. Under Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin's long watch, the gru has quietly grown in power
Speaker 1: and influence. In the weeks that followed the poisoning, Russia
Speaker 1: aggressively denied its involvement. The Organization for the Prohibition of
Speaker 1: Chemical Weapons meanwhile launched its own investigation, sending its experts
Speaker 1: to Salisbury to pour over the evidence. They produced a
Speaker 1: highly classified dossier based on shared intelligence and chemical analysis
Speaker 1: from the site. The dossier also included Russia's own version
Speaker 1: of events. These were the documents Paul now had in
Speaker 1: his hands.
Speaker 2: It was fascinating to read all this kind of close detail,
Speaker 2: you know, the the Russian version of the story. And
Speaker 2: then the other very interesting part of the documents was
Speaker 2: the actual formula for Novi.
Speaker 1: Chok, the chemical diagram for the poison, a technical outline
Speaker 1: for something that had been kept hidden from the world
Speaker 1: for decades, a weapon of mass destruction. So what we
Speaker 1: got far one, two through for five sort of staple
Speaker 1: chiefs of paper. Those documents that Marcelett handed over that
Speaker 1: day at the Kiefashenka Paul showed them to me, and well,
Speaker 1: they're internal documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of
Speaker 1: Chemical Weapons and these have been sort of illegally photocopied,
Speaker 1: right also, I think their photocopies anyway.
Speaker 2: Yea of photocopies, except that one is a PowerPoint presentation.
Speaker 2: They've all got barcodes on them and.
Speaker 1: This sort of big stamped watermark which says.
Speaker 2: This print out may contain OPCW confidential information warning. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're all different copy numbers though as well, aren't they.
Speaker 2: That's one of Sirius Deine. This one's twenty one.
Speaker 1: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is an
Speaker 1: international body based in the Hague. Almost all of the
Speaker 1: world's big military powers are signatories. Its job is to
Speaker 1: police and monitor weapons like Novi chok, to ensure they
Speaker 1: are never ever used. What was going through your head
Speaker 1: when you kind of first pulled this out of the
Speaker 1: manila envelope that they were all.
Speaker 2: In, Well, I was looking for a story. The Salisbury
Speaker 2: poisoning had been headline news for weeks on end. Suddenly
Speaker 2: I had, you know, what clearly were kind of classified
Speaker 2: documentsing specifically to that event. There had to be a
Speaker 2: story in it. You know, That's what I was after,
Speaker 2: and I was struck at how detailed and careful and
Speaker 2: yet completely fanciful. The Russian version of events was.
Speaker 1: In the documents. The Russians made the case that the
Speaker 1: British had manufactured novichok because Solibury is just down the
Speaker 1: road from Port and down a highly secure military research base,
Speaker 1: and the Russians they argued that the British government had
Speaker 1: somehow leaked the novichoc from its own chemical research lab.
Speaker 2: You know, I asked him, you know, point blank, where
Speaker 2: did he get this information?
Speaker 1: What did he say?
Speaker 2: He said he got it from a friend. And he
Speaker 2: did actually say that, you know, if I wanted further information,
Speaker 2: I should try him in future, that I'd be quite
Speaker 2: surprised at the sort of information he could access.
Speaker 1: So this was sort of like a little bit of
Speaker 1: an opening, kind of showing his wares, you know that
Speaker 1: if you wanted to keep him on side, and he
Speaker 1: could push other material your way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely that he was basically saying, look, I have
Speaker 2: friends in interesting places. I can help you in the future.
Speaker 2: We were building a relationship on both sides.
Speaker 1: While all of this unfolded. Dan McCrumb, the lead reporter
Speaker 1: on the Warcard investigation, hadn't been sitting still. In fact,
Speaker 1: he'd just found his very own treasure trove of documents,
Speaker 1: and these documents they would change everything because they finally
Speaker 1: gave Dan the ammunition he needed to prove that Wirecard
Speaker 1: was a fraud and that marce Lek was at the
Speaker 1: center of it. So when Paul got back to London
Speaker 1: and Dan told him all of this, Paul knew it
Speaker 1: was time to go back on the offensive against Warkard directly,
Speaker 1: and also therefore that it was time to fess up
Speaker 1: to Dan and to tell him he'd been secretly lunching
Speaker 1: with Marsilek over the past few months. Paul, you know,
Speaker 1: he'd gone to meet marcelect for lunch and he was
Speaker 1: kind of cultivating this parallel kind of you know, relationship
Speaker 1: with Marcelec. When did you find out about that and
Speaker 1: what was your first thought?
Speaker 3: Oh, man, there are moments in life when you were
Speaker 3: taken by surprise. I basically think he hadn't wanted to
Speaker 3: like blow my mind whilst I was focused on getting
Speaker 3: the story, because the important thing was to get the
Speaker 3: story out. But it had reached the point where it
Speaker 3: was sort of becoming embarrassing that he hadn't mentioned that
Speaker 3: he had quietly been dining with Yan Marslek. I'm like, sorry, what,
Speaker 3: But then he goes he's been flashing around top secret
Speaker 3: documents with a recipe for Navichok on them. I think
Speaker 3: my reaction was if he had just tried to tell
Speaker 3: me that Marcelek had faked the moon landings. It was
Speaker 3: so completely out of left field that you're like, sorry,
Speaker 3: what did you just say?
Speaker 1: To be clear, we had no evidence that Marcelect actually
Speaker 1: had anything to do with carrying out the poisonings, but
Speaker 1: the fact that he even had these documents was a bombshell,
Speaker 1: not only because the documents made it clear that Marcelek
Speaker 1: was entangled with something besides just a huge corporate fraud,
Speaker 1: but also because Marcelect had effectively chosen to disclose this.
Speaker 1: Marcelek pulled the spotlight onto himself, and it made us
Speaker 1: realize how little we knew about him at all.
Speaker 2: At that point, we just kind of had this sense
Speaker 2: that Marcello it was this kind of man of action
Speaker 2: and was mixed up somehow.
Speaker 1: In Viennese politics, Wakaard's aggressive surveillance of Paul and Dan intensified,
Speaker 1: and they managed to trace it back to a private
Speaker 1: security company in Vienna, the capital of Austria, and marce
Speaker 1: Lex home city. Paul and Dan were now going to
Speaker 1: spend the next few months battling to prove the fraud
Speaker 1: with the new documents Dan had received. For me, I
Speaker 1: was about to start a foreign posting in Switzerland and
Speaker 1: in Austria. If I was going to be on the ground,
Speaker 1: Paul thought, then I could surely make some inquiries.
Speaker 2: We already knew that there was a big Vienna angle
Speaker 2: to all this. We just didn't know what the angle was.
Speaker 2: We just didn't know which doors you had to not
Speaker 2: com We didn't know who you needed to get to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it worked. I remember thinking you were mad.
Speaker 1: I just thought, okay, all right, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: go to Austria and start talking to people about But
Speaker 1: you know, you were right. Sometimes it's the smallest, most
Speaker 1: unpromising or unexpected, little thread that you pull on that
Speaker 1: suddenly unravels something. Sometimes that thread is just an intuition,
Speaker 1: a feeling about someone, a sense that there's definitely something
Speaker 1: more here I don't know about, but that I recognized
Speaker 1: the shadow of As it turned out, this particular trace, well,
Speaker 1: it would slowly unravel into a story that wasn't just
Speaker 1: the sordid tale of one well connected fraudster, but instead
Speaker 1: the tale of one of the biggest spice scandals to
Speaker 1: have hit Europe since the Cold War.
Speaker 2: To this day, I remember that first note coming back
Speaker 2: from you, just saying that you needed a secure channel
Speaker 2: to communicate. The detail you put in that first note
Speaker 2: was just mind boggling, absolutely shocking. It was like a
Speaker 2: whole world just opened up. You know, this was no
Speaker 2: longer just about some weird German corporate There is this
Speaker 2: kind of huge, geopolitical kind of side to the story
Speaker 2: that was only just coming into view.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've felt in recent years that the world is
Speaker 1: a less certain place, that from the background there are
Speaker 1: threats or worries you'd never had to think about before
Speaker 1: that are suddenly present, wars that look like they might
Speaker 1: tip out of control, radical politicians tearing at the threads
Speaker 1: of civil society, Lies turned into truth by money. Well,
Speaker 1: this story is, in some senses an accounting of that,
Speaker 1: a story that can sometimes make you realize how tissue
Speaker 1: thin the idea of a stable, law abiding society can
Speaker 1: be one that's governed by economic, political, and moral rules
Speaker 1: we've all agreed on. It's a story about what kind
Speaker 1: of people get drawn into the world on the other
Speaker 1: side of that, and what kind of world that is
Speaker 1: a space carved out by crime and corruption, where money
Speaker 1: and power are unchecked by laws or borders or markets.
Speaker 1: That kind of world might sound terrifying, but to some
Speaker 1: people it's irresistible. To some people. It's not an alternative
Speaker 1: world at all. It's the real world. Coming up this
Speaker 1: season on Hot Money.
Speaker 4: I know politics is corrupt, I know everything and all
Speaker 4: that and all that I believe to know that, but
Speaker 4: this is too much. I thought. I hope that he
Speaker 4: will talk to you and you will be able to
Speaker 4: investigate on it, and perhaps misdeeds and misbehavior stopped very fast.
Speaker 2: Actually started then talking about his experience in Syria.
Speaker 3: He definitely has a view that he's operating with complete
Speaker 3: freedom to do whatever he likes.
Speaker 4: I don't know if they followed me to my home.
Speaker 4: The decision was very simple.
Speaker 5: It was a choice between being killed or in prison,
Speaker 5: and the other option was just to try to get
Speaker 5: real freedom.
Speaker 6: How much of it was an act?
Speaker 4: How much was genius?
Speaker 1: How much was learned, how much was instinctive?
Speaker 6: I often asked myself, now did I know the true
Speaker 6: jan at all?
Speaker 1: Hot Money is a production of The Financial Times and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. It was written and reported by me Sam Jones.
Speaker 1: The senior producer and co writer is Peggy Sutton. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Izzy Carter. Our researcher is Marine Saint. Our
Speaker 1: show is edited by Karen Shakergi, fact checking by Kira Levigne.
Speaker 1: Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorsky and Marcelo de Olivia,
Speaker 1: with additional sound design by Izzy Carter. Original music from
Speaker 1: Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphonet. Our show
Speaker 1: art is by Sean Carney. Our executive producers are Cheryl Brumle,
Speaker 1: Amy Gains McQuaid and Matthew Garahan. Additional editing by Paul Murphy.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Ruler Klaff, Dan McCrumb, Laura Clark, Alistair Mackey,
Speaker 1: Manuela Saragosa, Nigel Hanson, Vicki Merrick, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner,
Speaker 1: Jake Flanagan, Jacob Goldstein, Sarah Nix and Greta Cohne. I'm
Speaker 1: Sam Jones. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus. To listen to Hot Money,
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Speaker 1: You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and binges from
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