Speaker 1: Previously on Hot Money.
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?
Speaker 3: My first thing is 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. You do start to
Speaker 3: worry what you've sort of brought down on your family.
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 1: I remember thinking you were mad. I just thought, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm just going to go to Austria and
Speaker 1: start talking to people about our mar select. But you
Speaker 1: know you were right. Julian Hessenthyler races from one supermarket
Speaker 1: to another. He's sweating. It's not just the heat. He's nervous.
Speaker 1: He's hosting an important gathering tonight and everything needs to
Speaker 1: be just right, including the drinks.
Speaker 4: Which everybody thinks super easy. But just go to supermarket
Speaker 4: by drinks. I was expecting it to be certain. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can get anything, any high class drink you want.
Speaker 4: It was actually quite difficult.
Speaker 1: Julian's from Austria, but right now he's on the Spanish
Speaker 1: island of Ibitha. He's looking for a particular type of
Speaker 1: champagne armand de Brignac. Jay Z owns the brand. It's
Speaker 1: a couve that starts at three hundred pounds a pop.
Speaker 1: Julian knows it's the favorite of one of tonight's most
Speaker 1: important guests, but it seems to be too exclusive even
Speaker 1: for this global party hub, and he can't find it.
Speaker 1: He settles for Verdua, the priciest he can get in
Speaker 1: this shop. He pays for the drinks from a huge
Speaker 1: wad of bills in his pocket and lugs them out
Speaker 1: to the car. He's driving, a BMW convertible. He can't
Speaker 1: afford it, but he needs to keep up appearances. He
Speaker 1: winces as he heads back along a bumpy track.
Speaker 4: And I remember driving over there all the time, hitting
Speaker 4: the bottom of the carent thing. It demageing these guys
Speaker 4: so bad.
Speaker 1: Back at the villa he's rented for the party, he
Speaker 1: puts the drinks in the fridge and then jumps in
Speaker 1: the pool to cool down and calm his nerves. He
Speaker 1: showers and dresses for the evening. Then Julian does one
Speaker 1: final check of the cameras He's hidden around the property.
Speaker 1: They're in light switches, phone charges, and coffee cups. There's
Speaker 1: one tucked into a beach bag by the pool. He
Speaker 1: waits for his guests to arrive. Julian is a private investigator.
Speaker 1: Back then, he was thirty six years old. He didn't
Speaker 1: know it at the time, but that day, that party
Speaker 1: was the beginning of a huge scandal that would change
Speaker 1: his life forever. I'm Sam Jones, a journalist with the
Speaker 1: Financial Times. In May twenty nineteen, I arrived in Vienna
Speaker 1: with a request from my old editor Paul Murphy, to
Speaker 1: look for any information I could find about Yan Marcelek,
Speaker 1: a globe trotting international businessman, a billion dollar fraudster, and
Speaker 1: someone who had revealed to us that these two things
Speaker 1: might actually be the least interesting things about him. As
Speaker 1: I touched down in Austria, a political scandal exploded, precipitated
Speaker 1: by the video footage that Julian would film in that
Speaker 1: Abethan villa. It was chaos, and I was barely able
Speaker 1: to think about Marcelek. No one I spoke to knew him,
Speaker 1: and no one in Austria even seemed to have heard
Speaker 1: of wirecard. But as it turned out this scandal, the
Speaker 1: scandal I'm going to tell you about in this episode.
Speaker 1: It would lead me to understand who yan Marslek really
Speaker 1: was and what he was doing, because the Abithra affair
Speaker 1: would reveal a world that invites people like yan Marcelek,
Speaker 1: in a world in which people like him can thrive,
Speaker 1: a world of corruption and patronage. By stories. They often
Speaker 1: tell us as much about ourselves as they do about
Speaker 1: a rogue individual. They're a dark mirror on the failings
Speaker 1: of our own politics, our own societies. Julian's video would
Speaker 1: force the issue of Russian influence in Central Europe out
Speaker 1: into the open. It would show me a cast of
Speaker 1: characters who'd been operating in the shadows and begin to
Speaker 1: reveal how Jan Marselek moved among them. From the Financial
Speaker 1: Times and Pushkin Industries. This is Hot Money, Season three,
Speaker 1: Agent of Chaos, Episode two, The Friendship Society. For Julian,
Speaker 1: the whole thing started with a drinking buddy, a lawyer friend.
Speaker 1: One time after a few vodkas, this lawyer tells Julian
Speaker 1: about one of his clients. The client, he says, has
Speaker 1: evidence of something big, scandalous, rampant corruption at the very
Speaker 1: top of one of Austria's biggest political parties, the Freedom Party.
Speaker 1: The lawyer asks Julian for advice on how he can
Speaker 1: help his client to prove it.
Speaker 4: Basically told him, Luke might be possible to do it.
Speaker 4: I cannot say, but it's gonna take a budget. These
Speaker 4: kind of things all happen like on the fly. This
Speaker 4: needs to be blended, it needs to be paid for it.
Speaker 4: And to my big surprise, sometime later there again he
Speaker 4: came back and asked how much money that would be
Speaker 4: on it. Oh, I told him I think thirty or
Speaker 4: forty thousand ears for the start and see where we
Speaker 4: go from there. Ant he came and put the money
Speaker 4: down on the table a few days later.
Speaker 1: The Freedom Party is not a new force in Austrian politics,
Speaker 1: but it is radical, fiercely anti immigration. Its supporters are
Speaker 1: a hotchpotch united in their opposition to the Austrian establishment.
Speaker 1: Some are old school anti clerical liberals, some are nationalists,
Speaker 1: some the Nazis, most are just fed up. It's not
Speaker 1: long before Julian finds himself on the top floor of
Speaker 1: one of Vienna's most exclusive hotels, the Grand Hotel Vien.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid this is going to be a bit of
Speaker 1: a recurrence in this tale, these kind of venues. But
Speaker 1: then that's the great irony of hotels. Sleep is always
Speaker 1: the least interesting thing that happens in them. Julian's in
Speaker 1: a private dining room called the rotunda.
Speaker 4: It's like out of the Mafia movie. So it's a
Speaker 4: round room with a round table inside, and on the
Speaker 4: ceiling you have a fresco. It really looks like out
Speaker 4: of Scarfish.
Speaker 1: It's an intimate gathering.
Speaker 4: I took on a row as some sort of a
Speaker 4: concilierre if you want somebody who gives advice translates.
Speaker 1: He's made sure to set up a hidden video camera
Speaker 1: in case he gets anything incriminating that he can share
Speaker 1: with his lawyer friend. The guest of honor is a
Speaker 1: prominent politician from the Freedom Party, Johann Goudenos. He's hung,
Speaker 1: he's handsome, tall, athletic, and a bit of a party boy.
Speaker 1: That's his reputation anyway. Good Danas is officially the deputy
Speaker 1: mayor of Vienna, but he's also seen by many as
Speaker 1: one of the most influential figures in populist politics. What
Speaker 1: Goodanas is most known for in political circles, though, is
Speaker 1: his affinity for all things Russian. He studied in Moscow.
Speaker 1: He's a fluent speaker, and at the Grand Hotel he's
Speaker 1: making small talk in Russian with one of the other
Speaker 1: dinner guests, a woman who was introduced to him as
Speaker 1: the niece of a prominent Russian oligarch.
Speaker 4: And so the story that we presented was, Okay, we
Speaker 4: have the niece here of this certain oligarch, and she
Speaker 4: has about three hundred and fifty million euros that need
Speaker 4: to move. We need a way to wash, transfer and
Speaker 4: clean this money and invest it. And for all that
Speaker 4: we're looking for friends.
Speaker 1: The thing is the Russian oligarch's niece. She's not a
Speaker 1: Russian oligarch's niece. She's Julian's friend. To help her play
Speaker 1: the part, he's hard bodyguards. She arrived in a Maybach
Speaker 1: at top of the range ultra luxury Mercedes that costs
Speaker 1: more than the house.
Speaker 4: The dinner was like four thousand euros because he was
Speaker 4: like private dinner room. And then drinks were for sure
Speaker 4: running up to ten fifteen k that night because everybody
Speaker 4: was drinking heavily.
Speaker 1: These expensive details, though they're not trivial they're what's going
Speaker 1: to convince Goodanas that this woman is the real deal.
Speaker 1: And it works.
Speaker 4: So mister Goods within two hours was talking very openly
Speaker 4: about certain corruptive steps he was willing to take, and
Speaker 4: certain things he was willing to offer in certain contacts
Speaker 4: he was willing to provide.
Speaker 1: It's late and the evening draws to a close. Julian
Speaker 1: is convinced it's been a success, but then he discovers
Speaker 1: a problem.
Speaker 4: I'd never worked with video equipment before, and I had
Speaker 4: obviously fucked it up quite well because I had forgotten
Speaker 4: to put the SD cards, saved the memory cards, so
Speaker 4: there was no material. Actually, so there was evening went
Speaker 4: very great, but we just didn't have any material.
Speaker 1: He'd fallen into the trap completely. But actually you couldn't
Speaker 1: prove any of this. But things don't end there, in
Speaker 1: part because Julian likes a challenge and thinks that it
Speaker 1: might still be possible to pull this off. But also
Speaker 1: Goodanas won't let it go either. He keeps badgering Julian
Speaker 1: about this Oligarch's niece, would she, for example, be interested
Speaker 1: in buying some of his land at a vastly inflated
Speaker 1: price of course, what else can he help her with
Speaker 1: in Austria and what might she be able to do
Speaker 1: for the Freedom Party. Goodanas has one particularly striking idea.
Speaker 4: He says to her, if you've got that much money
Speaker 4: and you're looking to invest, why don't you buy the
Speaker 4: Croll a newspaper for us.
Speaker 1: Llan Zong is Austria's biggest newspaper, a tabloid read daily
Speaker 1: by nearly a quarter of the population. It would be
Speaker 1: a hugely influential platform for the Freedom Party.
Speaker 4: And he didn't all back why he was interested in that,
Speaker 4: because he said to me, if you do that for us,
Speaker 4: and you help us with the elections, we can do everything.
Speaker 4: I told him. Look all good, but this kind of
Speaker 4: stuff we need to sit with the boss.
Speaker 1: Julian tells good Danos that to make this deal happen,
Speaker 1: he needs to meet with the leader of the party,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon he gets a reply invitation accepted, and
Speaker 1: so Take two begins. When Julian begins to put his
Speaker 1: new plan together, he's only half expecting it will actually
Speaker 1: go anywhere. He's pretty sure that now he moved up
Speaker 1: the food chain with an attempt to get to the
Speaker 1: actual leader of the Freedom Party, someone at some point
Speaker 1: is going to do their research and rumble him.
Speaker 4: What was driving you? So at first when I started,
Speaker 4: I thought, okay, this is not going to go really
Speaker 4: nowhere much Then it was more like curiosity to a
Speaker 4: degree that was all the time just going further to
Speaker 4: see where the point was. When they would say, okay,
Speaker 4: look I'll find out, but show some idy, let's do
Speaker 4: it background check, meet with our security guy someding.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't happen, and without resistance, Julian finds that
Speaker 1: the mad cap plan he's cooking up it becomes a reality,
Speaker 1: and so that's how he ends up in a high
Speaker 1: stake sting to entrap the boss. The man who Party
Speaker 1: Boy Johann Goodana's answers to the leader of the Freedom Party,
Speaker 1: Heinz Christian Stracher Stroka is a radical, but he's also
Speaker 1: hugely popular. No Austrian politician has as many followers online
Speaker 1: these days. They call themselves Team Hasse Heinz Christian, so
Speaker 1: going after him it's no small deal. Gourdanas has by
Speaker 1: this point suggested to the oligarch's niece that she buys
Speaker 1: the country's biggest newspaper to help the party win upcoming
Speaker 1: elections in return for political favors. Julian's plan is to
Speaker 1: draw Struca into this notion too, and expose his willingness
Speaker 1: to be corrupted. What surprises Julian is just how quickly
Speaker 1: Struka says yes to the invitation. It has Julian wondering
Speaker 1: if he's got this far already, how far might others
Speaker 1: with much greater resources and fewer scruples have got hostile
Speaker 1: foreign countries?
Speaker 4: For example, So if I'm sitting here now after a
Speaker 4: few weeks, were state actistic and what does that mean
Speaker 4: for the country I was born in? So I cannot
Speaker 4: even explain that fully. But it was just like a
Speaker 4: feeling of that's just too much. I think that's the
Speaker 4: best way to put It's just too much. I know
Speaker 4: politics is corrupt, I know everything. I know that, I
Speaker 4: know that I believe to know that, but this is
Speaker 4: too much.
Speaker 1: It's no coincidence that this tale is going to loop
Speaker 1: back to jan Marcelek. Corruption isn't just the mood music
Speaker 1: in this whole series. It's the air that these characters breathe.
Speaker 1: It's July twenty seventeen when Julian tries again. He's on
Speaker 1: Abitha and he's just got back from that shopping trip.
Speaker 1: The champagne is on ice. He and the Russian oligarch's
Speaker 1: niece are on the terrace of a rented villa waiting
Speaker 1: for their guests to arrive, psyching themselves up this villa.
Speaker 1: It's pretty luxurious by any normal standard, but it's on Airbnb,
Speaker 1: and for that reason, Julian is a little nervous. Billionaires
Speaker 1: do not use Airbnb. The cover story he's prepared is
Speaker 1: that his client wouldn't be seen dead inviting people like
Speaker 1: Struka and Gourdanas to her real home on the island
Speaker 1: where her young family is. The whole thing is taking
Speaker 1: place on Abeitha for a reason. It's an open secret
Speaker 1: in Viennese political circles that every year Strucker and a
Speaker 1: bunch of acolytes head to the island to let loose.
Speaker 1: Julian has brought in professional help for the technical side
Speaker 1: of things. He's not going to mess up the recording
Speaker 1: a second time. There will be memory cards. The whole
Speaker 1: villa is rigged. There's a camera hidden in a phone
Speaker 1: charging station on a sideboard in a living room, another
Speaker 1: in a fake light switch taped to the wall. There
Speaker 1: are even cameras in the lid of a Starbucks coffee
Speaker 1: cup and in a small clock positioned on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 1: What we know about what happened that day? It all
Speaker 1: comes from Julian and the hours of tape and video
Speaker 1: from the villa. Struka arrives with Gourdanus, who has brought
Speaker 1: his wife Tayana. She's Serbian and another fluent Russian speaker.
Speaker 1: Introductions are made. Julian explains his role as a fixer
Speaker 1: and introduces his supposed client, the niece.
Speaker 4: We're just drinking some wine and testing each other. I
Speaker 4: guess mister Straka was asking, okay, what you do or
Speaker 4: is she from?
Speaker 1: Dinner is served in the garden Julian has ordered in
Speaker 1: trays of high end sushi. He and the oligarch's niece
Speaker 1: begin to work in their talking points as the conversation flows.
Speaker 1: They have a list of incriminating requests for Straka that
Speaker 1: they plan on floating with him in return for buying
Speaker 1: Austria's most influential paper.
Speaker 4: The main things we had said, we want you to
Speaker 4: change the laws or drinking water resources can be privatized.
Speaker 4: We told them we want contracts for the upkeep of
Speaker 4: military installations. We want airport contracts, we want tell the communications,
Speaker 4: so anything. A state actor would have an interest in
Speaker 4: getting his fingers.
Speaker 1: Into into a long evening, and it's getting chilly outside,
Speaker 1: so they move into the sitting room of the villa.
Speaker 1: In the footage from the secret recording that day, you
Speaker 1: can see Strucker sprawled on the sofa, the Oligarch's niece
Speaker 1: next to him, Goodanus is translating from German to Russian.
Speaker 1: There are empty bottles on the table. The sound is
Speaker 1: kind of rough, but if you listen carefully you can
Speaker 1: hear the conversation rambling over Austrian politics, the crimes of
Speaker 1: the Freedom Party's enemies, and their plans to win influence
Speaker 1: in the media. Goodanus and Struka they're drinking quite a lot,
Speaker 1: which probably helps because at two points things very nearly
Speaker 1: come off the rails. The Oligarch's niece is getting fed up.
Speaker 1: This is not what she signed up for. She's doing
Speaker 1: the whole thing as a favor for Julian, but it's
Speaker 1: taking a toll. She's an actress, not an actual spy.
Speaker 1: She hates these people, and her mask is beginning to slip.
Speaker 4: She was really being impolite he says, Okay, if you
Speaker 4: buy me this newspaper, I'm gonna be the next chancellor.
Speaker 4: And she looks him dead in the eye and tells him,
Speaker 4: I also want to be a cosmonaut. But you're just
Speaker 4: an idiot.
Speaker 5: And I mean.
Speaker 4: Were you were? You were in the room, Yeah, was
Speaker 4: in the room.
Speaker 1: What was going through your head?
Speaker 4: So she was talking Russian to mister Goods are translating.
Speaker 4: So the point is mister Shaker obviously didn't understand what
Speaker 4: mister Goodenos understands perfectly well what she said, he just
Speaker 4: doesn't translate it.
Speaker 1: Kudenius's wife is also an unexpected complication. At one point,
Speaker 1: she gazes directly into one of the hidden cameras as
Speaker 1: if she's seen it, and then she asks this question,
Speaker 1: how are you're not sure there's not a trap?
Speaker 4: And mister Shacker went into it. He was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's so strange that he came up with some strange
Speaker 4: reasons because the toenails of the Oligard Snieze were supposedly
Speaker 4: not in the in the condition word he would expect
Speaker 4: from her Oligard Sniez or whatever. So in any case,
Speaker 4: he was like, yeah, that's strange, and what's the Godos
Speaker 4: actually lied to him, so he actually told him, no, no,
Speaker 4: this is not a trap. We've known each other for
Speaker 4: a long time.
Speaker 1: Of course, Goodanas hasn't known the niece very long at all.
Speaker 1: They've barely spent more than an evening in each other's company.
Speaker 1: But already Goodanas is so invested in this fiction. He's
Speaker 1: excited by what this deal with the oligarch's niece could
Speaker 1: do for the Freedom Party and for him. He's ventured
Speaker 1: his reputation as the party's point man for Russia on it,
Speaker 1: and now he's got his boss involved as a result.
Speaker 1: He's the perfect unwitting ally in the deception. Julian realizes
Speaker 1: all the same he needs to increase the pressure, so
Speaker 1: he takes struck at aside and confronts him.
Speaker 4: We came here because we understood you're serious about this.
Speaker 4: Now we need to talk about this because it's clear
Speaker 4: we're not going to get contracts from you, and I
Speaker 4: think you're smart enough to understand that we're not going
Speaker 4: to invest in a fifty million just for you to
Speaker 4: tell us Yeah, when that happens, we'll see how what
Speaker 4: we can get to, because that's not how things work.
Speaker 4: So We're going to need an agreement here. The agreement
Speaker 4: needs to be clear cut.
Speaker 1: Straker says he gets it, but he's still being evasive.
Speaker 1: He says he wants to find a legal solution to
Speaker 1: gloss this relationship.
Speaker 4: It's like me going to rob a bank and telling them, look,
Speaker 4: give me all your money, but just so we both
Speaker 4: understand each other. This is not a robbery.
Speaker 1: By now, the sitting room is looking less Djestif's with
Speaker 1: a billionaire and more belaric lads on the lash. People
Speaker 1: are switching between languages, and Julian is worried about whether
Speaker 1: they're actually going to get incriminating material at all. He
Speaker 1: doesn't know, of course, just what has been caught by
Speaker 1: the different cameras around the villa. It's only later, after
Speaker 1: reviewing hours of tape that he hears the moment the
Speaker 1: bit he needs, and it comes right Strucka is leaving
Speaker 1: the villa and he turns around.
Speaker 4: He was already outside the door in the garden. He
Speaker 4: turns around and cast to mister gordenials and tells him
Speaker 4: go back and settle it now. Mister Gordenos goes back
Speaker 4: and there she's alone with the oligardsnies in the kitchen
Speaker 4: and that's awesome video. And he says he's trying to whisper,
Speaker 4: but it's the camera was quite near so you can hear.
Speaker 4: And he says, look, he's ready to do whatever you want.
Speaker 4: Just he cannot say do you understand? And she tells
Speaker 4: him I understand, But does he understand that even for me,
Speaker 4: this is a very risky move and he says, yes, yes,
Speaker 4: we're willing to do everything. I promise you.
Speaker 1: This final few seconds of footage is the match that
Speaker 1: will ignite a political bomb and end up putting me
Speaker 1: in front of the people who are the key to
Speaker 1: understanding Yan Marcelect's other life. Three months after the Abetha operation,
Speaker 1: something happens which really changes the whole nature of the
Speaker 1: material that Julian has on tape. The Freedom Party does
Speaker 1: better than expected in the elections. They get brought into government.
Speaker 1: Heinz Christian Straka. He becomes the Vice Chancellor, the second
Speaker 1: most powerful man in Austria. Julian has to be very
Speaker 1: careful who he talks to, and over the span of
Speaker 1: about a year and a half he begins to crack.
Speaker 4: This time feeling completely alone in the world carrying a
Speaker 4: weight you don't you cannot even really carry as much,
Speaker 4: too heavy for you, and not having no where to
Speaker 4: turn lord, having no one to take the load off
Speaker 4: of you. That's psychologically incredibly straighty. Where I was really
Speaker 4: blocking myself in at home, drinking myself to sleep, hating
Speaker 4: myself for having touched it.
Speaker 1: Secrets can have a hugely corrosive power. For some people,
Speaker 1: the radioactivity is what they enjoy most, but for others
Speaker 1: it can be unbearable. Julian tries to get on with
Speaker 1: his life, but he can't. Knowing what he knows, he
Speaker 1: begins to talk to two newspapers very tentatively about making
Speaker 1: the video public. He knows that in doing so he
Speaker 1: will probably get outed. There are many people in Austrian
Speaker 1: politics in the media who still believe Julian embarked on
Speaker 1: this project for commercial gain, but Julian says that's not
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 4: You never tried to sell the video. No, I never
Speaker 4: tried to sell the video.
Speaker 1: Jan Maselek wasn't directly involved in the Abitha scandal, but
Speaker 1: he's all around the edges of it. Julian remembers one
Speaker 1: uncomfortable coincidence after that night in Abetha, but before the
Speaker 1: video became public, an unexpected encounter on a plane.
Speaker 4: I was flying out of Moscow and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: mister Gudenos pops up and drops in a suit beside me, like, hey,
Speaker 4: way doing here? Piously? It was not what I expected
Speaker 4: or wanted.
Speaker 1: It that I am since he'd got the evidence he needed.
Speaker 1: Julian had been trying to distance himself from Struka and Goudenas,
Speaker 1: so this was the last thing he wanted. But Goudanas
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about someone he'd just met and had
Speaker 1: been really impressed by.
Speaker 4: He told me, yeah, that's a great time.
Speaker 6: You though I wasn't a party on a yacht jach Moscow. Yeah,
Speaker 6: ask him jacht in Moscow. A. Yeah, there's a guy
Speaker 6: yan who you need to meet him. Somebody's austrianas He's
Speaker 6: a great guy. You need to meet jan.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Julian decides to go public. He hands over four
Speaker 1: plus hours of raw footage to the press, and then
Speaker 1: in May twenty nineteen, it happens. The Abetha video lands,
Speaker 1: and the effect is almost instantaneous. Strucker and Goudanas resign,
Speaker 1: the whole Austrian government collapses. Everything is in flux, and
Speaker 1: this is the moment. When I arrived in Vienna, I
Speaker 1: did reach out to Heinz christ Shruker about all this.
Speaker 1: He told me that the Abetha video was a setup,
Speaker 1: in his words, an illegally staged trap. In fact, he
Speaker 1: believes there was another actor behind Julian and his lawyer friend,
Speaker 1: an intelligence service. He says the video was edited to
Speaker 1: do maximum damage to him, pointing out that only five
Speaker 1: minutes or so of tape was initially released. The rest
Speaker 1: of the tape, he says, shows him rejecting offers of corruption.
Speaker 1: He also wonders why the video was released nearly two
Speaker 1: years after it was made. Of the seventeen official investigations
Speaker 1: and lawsuits against him, fourteen have now been dropped or
Speaker 1: overturned on appeal. As it happens, Strucker hasn't left politics.
Speaker 1: He's running to be mayor of Vienna as leader of
Speaker 1: his new political party team Harsei. We reached out to
Speaker 1: Goodinas too, he didn't respond. He has always denied wrongdoing
Speaker 1: and refuted allegations of corruption in connection with the Abetha scandal.
Speaker 1: The day after Julian's video aired, I took a call
Speaker 1: from a friendly diplomat. He had seen my coverage of
Speaker 1: the Abetha scandal, and he off handedly told me, if
Speaker 1: you're interested in real Russian influence in Austrian politics, never
Speaker 1: mind fake oligarch's nieces, then you need to dig into
Speaker 1: the Austrian Russian Friendship Society. I grin broadly as I
Speaker 1: hear this, because that has got to be the worst
Speaker 1: cover name for a front organization I have ever heard.
Speaker 1: He says, all the best secrets in Austria are in
Speaker 1: plain sight. It turns out that there's even a website
Speaker 1: for the Friendship Society, the UFGE, which stands for take
Speaker 1: a deep breath. Everyone is to Reikish Worsishevfreinschaft gaze shaft.
Speaker 1: It's pretty clear that lots of material has already been
Speaker 1: taken down, but not everything. There's still a link to
Speaker 1: a flier an invitation a summit featuring Russia's deputy foreign minister,
Speaker 1: It's ambassador to vienn and a host of security officials
Speaker 1: from Moscow. The venue the Austrian Ministry of Defense. For
Speaker 1: the second time in the day, I find myself grinning,
Speaker 1: maybe even actually laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of
Speaker 1: this because the thing is Russia, even at this stage,
Speaker 1: is something of a pariah in Europe. In February twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: it invaded its neighbour seizing CRIMEA. It's medled in the
Speaker 1: US presidential election. It's been exposed for the mass doping
Speaker 1: of its athletes at the Olympics. It's systematically hacking and
Speaker 1: in some cases damaging commercial computer networks. It's just killed
Speaker 1: an innocent woman in Britain with a highly dangerous nerve
Speaker 1: agent in a botched assassination attempt. Even if the Austrian
Speaker 1: government hadn't just collapsed, this friendly meeting would look odd.
Speaker 4: First thing.
Speaker 1: The next day, I call the Ministry of Defense to
Speaker 1: ask about this summit, and I'm surprised when I actually
Speaker 1: get an answer. It's not happening at the Ministry anymore.
Speaker 1: I get told it's going to be held privately, and
Speaker 1: then Soto Voce, I'm not sure I'm supposed to say,
Speaker 1: where a pause? Have you got a pen? It's happening
Speaker 1: at the Grand Hotel, the very same hotel in downtown
Speaker 1: Vienna where Julian Hessenthaler first tried and failed to get
Speaker 1: Johann Gurdenos on tape before Ibitha. That afternoon, I decide
Speaker 1: to try and gatecrash this summit. The Grand Hotel has
Speaker 1: a busy taxi rank outside, which gives the opportunity to
Speaker 1: walk past relatively inconspicuously. I try to get a sense
Speaker 1: of what's going on inside and whether there are any
Speaker 1: irritating security arrangements in place. It seems there or not.
Speaker 1: I strided in as confidently as I can. Reception is quiet.
Speaker 1: There's no obvious sign that anything is happening here today.
Speaker 1: I ask a porter. He tells me to look upstairs
Speaker 1: in the conference suite. There's a thrum of people towards
Speaker 1: the end of the corridor, so I discreetly join them,
Speaker 1: and I'm surprised when I get ushered into this room
Speaker 1: and hurried into a seat. The Russian deputy foreign Minister
Speaker 1: and ambassador are about to arrive, and the organizers want
Speaker 1: everyone sat down. What followed wasn't hugely exciting. There were
Speaker 1: some odd speeches, full of platitudes and familiar Russian talking
Speaker 1: points about their status as a great power and so on.
Speaker 1: At this stage, I don't really know what I'm here
Speaker 1: looking for or expecting. I don't recognize the faces of
Speaker 1: the various civil servants who have turned up. So I
Speaker 1: decide I'll creep out at the next opportunity. I've seen
Speaker 1: this event taking place, I've seen what's being said, and
Speaker 1: to be honest, for now, that seems like enough. I'm
Speaker 1: also on a bit of an adrenaline high, mainly because
Speaker 1: I'm pretty surprised I haven't yet been rumbled. But then
Speaker 1: as I leave, something else catches my eye. In the
Speaker 1: corridor now empty is a registration desk. On this registration
Speaker 1: desk a sheet of paper, a register of attendees and invitees.
Speaker 1: Without stopping to think, I grab it, roll it up,
Speaker 1: and stick it in the inside pocket of my jacket.
Speaker 1: I don't properly look at it until I'm back at
Speaker 1: my hotel, sat in front of my laptop. I know
Speaker 1: this document could be important because I think my diplomat
Speaker 1: friend was hinting earlier that the Friendship Society is a
Speaker 1: cover for Russian influence and intelligence operations. So I look
Speaker 1: through the list for leads. None of the names jump
Speaker 1: out at me until I noticed something else. One sponsor
Speaker 1: has a very familiar name, Wirecard. I told myself that
Speaker 1: this sudden appearpearance of wire Card, a huge German company
Speaker 1: my colleagues were investigating for fraud. Was probably a coincidence,
Speaker 1: but it kept niggling at me. Paul Murphy, my editor
Speaker 1: at the FT, had told me that Marcelec Wirecard's chief
Speaker 1: operating officer was somehow involved in Austrian politics behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: an impression he'd got from their lunches together in London
Speaker 1: and Munich. After only a few weeks in Austria, I
Speaker 1: felt I had found some tiny bits of a puzzle.
Speaker 1: I knew they must join together to maybe tell us
Speaker 1: what Marcelet was up to. I just couldn't see how
Speaker 1: I needed to find someone who could help. That someone
Speaker 1: turned out to be Stephanie Crisper Stephie.
Speaker 7: I never wanted to get into politics. I had no
Speaker 7: intention to do so.
Speaker 1: Stephie is an MP for Austria's young reformist party, The Nails.
Speaker 1: She's now one of my most valuable contacts in Austria.
Speaker 1: Stephie remembers hearing about Julian's Abetha video. As for most
Speaker 1: of Austria's liberal politicians, it was an electric moment.
Speaker 4: I was totally astonished.
Speaker 7: What was shocking is the brutality in which Stracher voised
Speaker 7: his intentions to act in a corrupt way.
Speaker 1: After the Abetha scandal broke, the Austrian Parliament voted to
Speaker 1: create a special investigatory committee with huge powers, basically the
Speaker 1: ability to act like a mini court. It was called
Speaker 1: the Abetha Committee. Almost all of its work was secret,
Speaker 1: but it was investigating exactly what I was interested in.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Julian and the Abetha scandal, it was going
Speaker 1: to probe Russian influence in Austrian politics, among other things,
Speaker 1: the Friendship society, so surely I thought it would shed
Speaker 1: further light on marcele X's role there. Stephie, she was
Speaker 1: a member of this committee, the most outspoken, and that's
Speaker 1: why I knew I had to try and get to
Speaker 1: know her. The first time I met with Stephi in
Speaker 1: person was not long after the Obetha scandal broke. We
Speaker 1: were in her office, a huge grand room like all
Speaker 1: these other Viennese offices, but the floor space was filled
Speaker 1: with desks and files. We were talking about corruption in
Speaker 1: Austrian politics. But at the end of the conversation I
Speaker 1: asked if she had ever heard of anyone called Jan Marsilek.
Speaker 1: Stephie and I have slightly different memories of how that
Speaker 1: conversation went. And then at the end of the meeting,
Speaker 1: I asked, oh, and do you know anything about this guy,
Speaker 1: Jan marshal Ek. But that was I said no, you didn't.
Speaker 4: You said maybe, yeah, but I didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: You you looked in a funny way and said, m.
Speaker 4: I'll talk about ask someone exactly.
Speaker 1: Stephie is right. She didn't say anything. But what was
Speaker 1: totally clear to me was that yes, she did know
Speaker 1: this name, and for whatever reason, she couldn't talk about it.
Speaker 1: Next time I was in Vienna, Steffie got in touch.
Speaker 1: She said she'd like to tell me something. She suggested
Speaker 1: a venue. It's a boat on the Danube, well almost,
Speaker 1: it's a maued floating pavilion really, and it's on the
Speaker 1: Danube Canal. But anyway, it was mid afternoon and it
Speaker 1: was cold, and when I get there, Steffie suggests we
Speaker 1: sit outside. We're the only ones. Stephie says that yes,
Speaker 1: she has heard of Jan Marcelek. Specifically, she's heard about
Speaker 1: him through a friend. She can't really tell me much more,
Speaker 1: but this friend, she says, believes Marcelek is very dangerous.
Speaker 7: And I'm asked not to talk to anybody because he
Speaker 7: like others just tell me things because they are afraid.
Speaker 7: So I to do nothing. I mean, yes, I google myself, Marcelek, etcetera.
Speaker 7: But I don't ask journalists you what they think about
Speaker 7: this guy. I really do nothing.
Speaker 1: What he said to you, he was worried about his
Speaker 1: personal safety, Yes, exactly. I tell her what I know,
Speaker 1: that wirecarde is a huge fraud, that Marcilek is at
Speaker 1: the center of it, and that we at the FT
Speaker 1: know he uses aggressive surveillance and private investigators to go
Speaker 1: after people. Stephie says she'll go back to her source
Speaker 1: and relay that we're looking into Marcelek, but she doesn't
Speaker 1: tell me much more. The impression I get is that
Speaker 1: whoever this person is, he's not exactly the anxious type,
Speaker 1: and so whatever he's concerned about is genuine. Stephie later
Speaker 1: asked this man if he'd be willing to meet me,
Speaker 1: and he was.
Speaker 7: I thought, I hope that he will talk to you
Speaker 7: and you will be able to investigate on it. And
Speaker 7: things come up and there are consequences and PEPs misdeeds
Speaker 7: and misbehavior is stopped.
Speaker 1: Several weeks go by and Steffie gets in touch again.
Speaker 1: It's late December and I'm back in Vienna for a
Speaker 1: quick visit to tie up some loose ends before heading
Speaker 1: back to Zurich. Vienna is feeling particularly festive and in
Speaker 1: the city parks, foresters have come down from the hills
Speaker 1: with huge truckloads of fir trees to sell to the Viennese.
Speaker 1: Steffie tells me this source of hers is in town. Now,
Speaker 1: that's rare, she says, normally he's not even in Europe.
Speaker 1: But time is limited. He can meet in the evening.
Speaker 1: I curse because my flight home is at seven, but
Speaker 1: I decide I can catch the night train back instead,
Speaker 1: So I go back to Stephie and the meeting is on.
Speaker 1: We agree a venue, Cafe Prucu Prukol is one of
Speaker 1: the great Viennese coffee houses. Its interior is unexpected. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful, entirely original nineteen fifties scheme, polished wood, light green,
Speaker 1: upholstery worn and a bit tatty, and some soft dusty
Speaker 1: pink on the walls. This time in the evening is
Speaker 1: bright and busy. There's a pianist. Waiters hurry back and forth,
Speaker 1: and there's a typical Viennese crowd, young Christmas revelers, stately
Speaker 1: dharma with tissans and furs and academic looking men faces
Speaker 1: buried in huge newspapers. That evening, I grab a discrete
Speaker 1: table in the corner of the room with a view
Speaker 1: to the door and my back to the wall. I
Speaker 1: don't know who I'm looking for, and in keeping with
Speaker 1: the generally cinematic feel of it all, I turn up
Speaker 1: to Prukel with a copy of the ft In under
Speaker 1: my arm so much it turned out hinged on this
Speaker 1: moment and what it would deliver treasure a breakthrough lead.
Speaker 1: As far as I was aware, I only had one
Speaker 1: shot with this source and we only had fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: I had to find out what he knew. But I
Speaker 1: also needed to get a sense of whether he was credible,
Speaker 1: and most important of all, I had to try to
Speaker 1: convey to him that I was credible too. I needed
Speaker 1: him to trust me enough that I could keep a
Speaker 1: connection with him. And then I spot a man coming
Speaker 1: through the door of the cafe. Looking around. He's in
Speaker 1: his mid fifties. He's solidly built, ever so slightly imposing,
Speaker 1: with a broad, open face and thick stubble. He walks
Speaker 1: towards me, spotting the copy of the paper in front
Speaker 1: of me. I'm Killian, he says. We don't have much time,
Speaker 1: and in my haste, all I've brought with me to
Speaker 1: scribble on is the time only four sheet pad for
Speaker 1: telephone messages from my hotel room. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: who you are?
Speaker 4: I ask?
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what you know about Yan Marsilek.
Speaker 1: He's met Yan Marcelek a handful of times, He's been
Speaker 1: to his home, he's had dinner with him, he was
Speaker 1: employed by him, and he's convinced that Marcelek is working
Speaker 1: closely with Russian intelligence. How does Killian know that? Because
Speaker 1: Yan basically did everything but tell him so next time
Speaker 1: on Hot Money.
Speaker 5: And then very fast actually he started then talking about
Speaker 5: his experience in Syria facilitated by the boys, just after
Speaker 5: the recapture of the city of Panira from Isis.
Speaker 1: When he said, with the boys, what did you say?
Speaker 5: He basically said, with the Russians.
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 Levine,
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 Brumley,
Speaker 1: Amy Gains McQuaid and Matthew Garahan. Additional editing by Paul Murphy.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Ruler Calaffe, Dan McCrumb, Laura Clark, Alistair Mackey,
Speaker 1: Manuela Saragosa, Nigel Hanson, Vicky Merrick, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner,
Speaker 1: Jake Flanagan, Jacob Goldstein, Sarah Nix, and Greta Cohane. 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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