Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on Hot Money. I don't know. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of almost like a Sharon Stone moment from Basic Instinct.
Speaker 1: You know the plot of Basic Instinct where she she
Speaker 1: murders her husband. But that's also the plot of the
Speaker 1: book she's written, so it couldn't possibly be true.
Speaker 2: Do you know about this life sized Trump figure in
Speaker 2: the office and his marshal's office and his altar of
Speaker 2: Russian officers kept Yeah, those heads.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the biggest tragedy of Jan Marzialek is he
Speaker 3: probably could have earned millions gazillions with his charm and
Speaker 3: his wit and his business cumin and his skills, that
Speaker 3: he didn't need to be.
Speaker 4: What he turned out to be.
Speaker 1: This is Porta Cule, which is the kind of marina
Speaker 1: in the center of Monaco, just below the ward of
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo. The hills kind of rise up on either
Speaker 1: side around it, the casino on the left and on
Speaker 1: the right up there as the old town and the
Speaker 1: royal palace, and all along the edges of the marina
Speaker 1: here are huge boats. I'm in Monaco on the Codazure
Speaker 1: in the south of France. You're not spotting with my
Speaker 1: former editor Paul Murphy. Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: It's a big s Yeah, that one's really that must
Speaker 1: be sixty or something. Yeah, well then okay, yeah, this
Speaker 1: one is a small cruise ship. Paul covered finance in
Speaker 1: London for years and he knows this part of the
Speaker 1: world pretty well. A sunny place for shady people. You know,
Speaker 1: you come here because this is sort of a nowhere
Speaker 1: place in a way. You know, it's a fantasy world playground. Well,
Speaker 1: there are specific reasons people do come here.
Speaker 5: Up.
Speaker 6: You know, there's text, right, because there isn't any income
Speaker 6: text right, There's security is quite important.
Speaker 1: Security because they won't be snooped on or I think
Speaker 1: that's what I but also just kind of old fashioned.
Speaker 1: Won't get robbed, right, won't get in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just a place where money talks, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's also been in recent years the place where wealthy
Speaker 1: Russians come to summer, even now with most of the
Speaker 1: country's oligarchs under European sanctions, it's packed full of Russian visitors.
Speaker 1: Not that you'd be able to tell that from the marina,
Speaker 1: where on a balmy June evening super yacht after super
Speaker 1: yacht is lined up getting hosed down by its crew.
Speaker 1: Almost all of them are flying a Maltese flag, not
Speaker 1: because they're from Malta, but because you can register ownership
Speaker 1: of your yacht there anonymously. This is a place where
Speaker 1: the super rich can remain under the radar and live
Speaker 1: by their own rules, which might bring someone to mind.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: On the three occasions I had lunch with Yan Marslek
Speaker 6: in London, well, first two in London, the third one
Speaker 6: in Munich, he would always choose the most expensive lunching venue.
Speaker 6: Marslik is attracted to kind of over wealth, displays of
Speaker 6: over wealth. It clearly is always liked to rub shoulders
Speaker 6: with the super rich, and this is a great place
Speaker 6: to do it and as such a natural place for
Speaker 6: the Marslek to appear.
Speaker 1: And before the collapse of Wildcard, Yan Masslek was here
Speaker 1: on the Kuda's often socializing, carousing and hanging out with
Speaker 1: lots of Russians. There's one year during this period in
Speaker 1: his life that seems to have particular relevance twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: the year Russia first invaded Ukraine and the year some
Speaker 1: say a transformative thing happened to Marcelect down here in
Speaker 1: the sun. The most significant and secretive thing that can
Speaker 1: happen in the life of a spy the moment he
Speaker 1: may have chosen to really dedicate himself to serving Russia's interests.
Speaker 1: At the time, most Europeans were growing more afraid, more
Speaker 1: wary of Russia's intentions, more skeptical of the Kremlin's interest
Speaker 1: in peace. But Marcelek, a young, talented and successful European businessman,
Speaker 1: went the other way. I think some people end up spies,
Speaker 1: traitors against their better interests. They get tricked into serving
Speaker 1: someone else's cause. Some spies get seduced into it, and
Speaker 1: some spies get blackmailed, but some they do it beca
Speaker 1: because they want to, because they believe in something, a
Speaker 1: loyal to something, and they are the perfect spies. I'm
Speaker 1: Sam Jones and from the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: This is Hot Money, Agent of Chaos, Episode five, A
Speaker 1: different set of rules. The most widely reported story of
Speaker 1: how Marslek was recruited by Russia is set just a
Speaker 1: few miles away from Monaco in the Port at Nice.
Speaker 1: It's a moment that could reveal some clues as to
Speaker 1: why he chose his path so I went to see
Speaker 1: the spot. I mean, we're standing just like meters from
Speaker 1: the stern of one of these yachts, and could have
Speaker 1: just been one like this where they would have just
Speaker 1: been sat there, you know, around a table, having drinks
Speaker 1: or whatever. Talking for Natalia's thirtieth birthday. Natalia's lobina, a
Speaker 1: glamorous woman Jan Maslek was dating while also dating his
Speaker 1: long term girlfriend in Munich. Natalia is Russian, there isn't
Speaker 1: too much information available about her. Many of her records
Speaker 1: have been blanked from Russian state databases. One thing I
Speaker 1: can say about her is that in her youth she
Speaker 1: appeared in a schlocky semi pornographic lesbian vampire flick called
Speaker 1: Red Lips two Bloodlust, and in this film, Natalia plays
Speaker 1: the role of a KGB assassin who murders her victims
Speaker 1: with a deadly nerve agent, which, apart from the murdering,
Speaker 1: is perhaps a particularly curious case of art prefiguring life,
Speaker 1: because by the time her thirtieth birthday rolled around, she
Speaker 1: had developed close connections to Russia's intelligence services. It was
Speaker 1: a warm July evening in twenty fourteen a port camera
Speaker 1: captured Marcelek striding to warwards a mega yacht, where he's
Speaker 1: greeted by Natalia before they climb on board to join
Speaker 1: a group of men. We know all this thanks to
Speaker 1: an article from a consortium of journalists that was published
Speaker 1: in Germany's Deshpiegel and other outlets in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and although there are differing interpretations of what exactly happened,
Speaker 1: the setting and who was there are known thanks to
Speaker 1: that camera footage and from people who attended at this party.
Speaker 1: Natalia introduces Marcelek to a man named Staz Staz Pittlinsky,
Speaker 1: a Russian military man who has connections to the gru
Speaker 1: Russian military intelligence and the agency we understood Marcelect be
Speaker 1: working with in Libya. And what some reporters say happened
Speaker 1: is this on the yacht, Stas recruitian to work for
Speaker 1: Russian intelligence. They quote a source who witnessed the early
Speaker 1: days of Marcelec's friendship with Staz. They say, you can
Speaker 1: see Marcelek from two perspectives, Marcelect before Stas and Marcelek
Speaker 1: after Stas. This possible moment of Marcelec's recruitment is fascinating
Speaker 1: to me, partly because it's a story we've all heard
Speaker 1: a version of before. It's that old tale of doing
Speaker 1: a deal with dark forces, the Faust legend, a fable
Speaker 1: that's been told over and over again in different forms.
Speaker 1: That's one reason why recruitment has this mythology around it.
Speaker 1: But actually it's a little unhelpful to consider it as
Speaker 1: just a handshake with the devil, because recruitment almost never
Speaker 1: happens in a single moment. It's a process. I needed
Speaker 1: to speak to someone who could tell me more about
Speaker 1: how that works and understand the significance of this moment
Speaker 1: in Nice because we know already that Marcelek did say yes.
Speaker 1: What we still don't know is why Hi Boris Hiatleo Sam.
Speaker 1: This is Boris Boris Voladavski today. He's a historian specializing
Speaker 1: in Cold War spying and a filmmaker. Everything went well
Speaker 1: with the filming.
Speaker 7: Absolutely absolutely, We're finishing, but still working at day and night.
Speaker 1: He's seventy and has a mildly exaggerated anglophile pose to
Speaker 1: his dress, low ties and waistcoats and umbrellas and so on.
Speaker 1: Boris's film is a semi dramatized documentary. It's called Spy
Speaker 1: Capital two and it's all about Jan Marcelek. So like me,
Speaker 1: Boris has been spending a lot of time trying to
Speaker 1: get into Marcelek's head. But I'm not actually interested in
Speaker 1: speaking to Boris just because of this film. I'm interested
Speaker 1: because Boris is himself a former Russian intelligence officer.
Speaker 7: It's very simple concerning my rather short participation with Russian
Speaker 7: special forces, which I was an office of spetsnaz what
Speaker 7: is called normally into worst sleeper agents.
Speaker 1: So if anyone is going to be able to credibly
Speaker 1: interpret mas Lex recruitment, perhaps it's Boris. In the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Boris was fresh out of university with a bevy of
Speaker 1: European languages under his belt. That's when he was drawn
Speaker 1: into an elite cadret of three hundred Russian special agents
Speaker 1: whose mission was to infiltrate European states and wait for
Speaker 1: an expected war between the USSR and the West. Do
Speaker 1: you know where they would have sent you? Was it
Speaker 1: Germany or Austria? Did they disclose that? Oh?
Speaker 7: Yes, I know, definitely. The first destination should have been Germany,
Speaker 7: and we studied Germany in every detail, and from Germany,
Speaker 7: after a couple of years in Germany, it was to
Speaker 7: be a transfer to England.
Speaker 1: Boris spent six years training for this mission, turned into
Speaker 1: a lethal secret machine.
Speaker 7: There were very interested in linguistic exercises, psychological linguistics, practical linguistics,
Speaker 7: phonetics and other things. And toward the diving, mountaineering, parachuting,
Speaker 7: martial arts or all those sorts of things. We were
Speaker 7: to handle, all sorts of handguns, submachine guns, pistols, all
Speaker 7: those sorts of things. That was interesting.
Speaker 1: This is a bit of a funny question, but did
Speaker 1: you believe in what you were being trained to do?
Speaker 1: What was your sense of loyalty?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Was it too Russia? Did you believe in the purpose
Speaker 1: of what was going on?
Speaker 7: It was much less a kind of ideology or propaganda,
Speaker 7: but more of fun and interest in what you were
Speaker 7: going through and how you were trained.
Speaker 1: Boris didn't recruit new agents, but he did know a
Speaker 1: lot about how the GIU worked. So I asked Boris,
Speaker 1: how would the GIU you go about recruiting someone like
Speaker 1: Jan Masselek.
Speaker 7: There's a long check, there's a so called development of
Speaker 7: the target in order to know him better, to know
Speaker 7: whether he is inclined in this or that way, to
Speaker 7: collaborate with foreign intelligence service, whether he is inclined to
Speaker 7: provide information that is needed from him. And if Moscow decides,
Speaker 7: and it is always Moscow who decides. If Moscow decided
Speaker 7: that this person can be and should be recruited, then
Speaker 7: they work out ways of how to recruit this person.
Speaker 1: So initially you'd have someone that would identify a potential target,
Speaker 1: and then you'd have a period of development where you
Speaker 1: would watch them, maybe test them a little bit, sort
Speaker 1: of introduce figures into their life, see how they respond,
Speaker 1: see if they're suitable as an agent to recruit.
Speaker 7: That's correct, Yes, and even in the so called easy
Speaker 7: cases that might go one for three months, six months,
Speaker 7: for a year, or even longer.
Speaker 1: Right, And what kind of things would a GIU officer
Speaker 1: be looking for, I mean psychologically, what kind of person
Speaker 1: or profile might they see as somebody that's vulnerable to recruitment.
Speaker 7: A person that should be judged vulnerable for recruitment is
Speaker 7: somebody who has something negative like here is very much
Speaker 7: interested in money, in women and getting promotion, in getting business.
Speaker 7: Somebody who is interested in something.
Speaker 1: And of course that kind of weakness isn't only found
Speaker 1: in greedy businessmen.
Speaker 7: If we are talking about recruiting a journalist, for example,
Speaker 7: it would be somebody who would get access, suddenly, get
Speaker 7: access to information sensitive inside information, would be admitted, for example,
Speaker 7: to some Kremlin Kremlins briefings, or get access to some
Speaker 7: persons within the Kremlins, and imustration from my chair something.
Speaker 1: Now. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: when I used to cover defense for the Ft, this
Speaker 1: kind of thing happened to me. A couple of times
Speaker 1: I got offered access that seemed too good to be true,
Speaker 1: though not with the Russians. And to be clear, I
Speaker 1: wasn't recruited, and maybe I was just being hypervigilant, but
Speaker 1: even at the time, I remember thinking something felt slightly off.
Speaker 1: And it reminds me a little bit too of Marcelek
Speaker 1: giving Paul the k Novechok document. One way I see
Speaker 1: that is as an enticement, a suggestion that if Paul
Speaker 1: played ball, there might be more juicy information to come.
Speaker 1: When I think about marceleg and Nice, I can tick
Speaker 1: off a lot of the factors that Boris mentions. By
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, he'd been traveling to Russia for years, so
Speaker 1: he was almost certainly on the radar of Russian intelligence.
Speaker 1: He was evidently interested in money. His whole lifestyle was
Speaker 1: fueled by it. He had a weakness for attractive women,
Speaker 1: and of course he had another big weakness too, he
Speaker 1: was a fraudster. So one way you could interpret that
Speaker 1: day is like this. Here was Jan Marcelek, by this
Speaker 1: point already secretly breaking the law, partying on a yacht
Speaker 1: with a Russian fem fetale who wasn't his long term girlfriend.
Speaker 1: A perfect set of opportunities for blackmail. And yet Boris
Speaker 1: believes that there's much more to it. Boris says he
Speaker 1: has directly spoken with Stas Polinski, the supposed GRU agent
Speaker 1: who was on the yacht. We haven't been able to
Speaker 1: get in contact with him ourselves, Boris says. Staz is
Speaker 1: in Moscow and keeping a low profile. He says Staz
Speaker 1: probably spoke to him so freely because they're both Russians
Speaker 1: and both from an intelligence world. And Stas told him
Speaker 1: he didn't recruit Marcelek.
Speaker 7: He had never recruited Marsalk as presented in this in
Speaker 7: the media in most of the newspapers, because this was
Speaker 7: not his job.
Speaker 1: So, just to be clear, Boris, you had a long
Speaker 1: conversation with Stas by phone at you reached him in Moscow,
Speaker 1: and based on that, you're very clear that he is
Speaker 1: not a person who could have performed that function of
Speaker 1: being a recruiter.
Speaker 7: Absolutely in our way, Absolutely in our way, a recruiter
Speaker 7: is a very specific job, and if we were talking
Speaker 7: about somebody or would be sent to recruit a person
Speaker 7: like Marsalk that would be a specially trained recruiter. But
Speaker 7: that definitely not happen, So we are absolutely sure that
Speaker 7: Petinski did not recruit Marsalic.
Speaker 1: I have some questions about Boris's conversation with Stas. I
Speaker 1: think any intelligence officer would deny recruiting an asset, and
Speaker 1: I wonder if Boris's view of recruitment is perhaps a
Speaker 1: bit outdated based on his own experience from his time
Speaker 1: in the GIU in the nineteen eighties, because, as I
Speaker 1: understand Russia's modern intelligence agencies, their activities can be much
Speaker 1: less formalized, much less constrained in who they engage with
Speaker 1: to work for them. I'm also thinking Boris is a
Speaker 1: trained undercover intelligence officer formerly of the same service Marcelek
Speaker 1: is alleged to work for to play Devil's advocate. I
Speaker 1: suppose people might say, well, you know, Boris, you're former
Speaker 1: GIU officer. Maybe you're just saying that too, because that's
Speaker 1: what the Kremlin wants you to say to minimize this scandal.
Speaker 1: What's your response to that.
Speaker 7: I am response to that that I have not been
Speaker 7: a JIU office in the past thirty years the country.
Speaker 7: I am an intelligence historian who is writing books that
Speaker 7: are very very much unliked in Russia. I am doing investigations.
Speaker 7: I'm identifying Russian agents. I am identifying in my books
Speaker 7: how Russian intelligence services work. I show their weak parts,
Speaker 7: I show their strong parts. I explain how the structure operates.
Speaker 7: I am giving plenty of interviews, writing plenty of articles myself,
Speaker 7: doing films that, of course are very much negatively viewed
Speaker 7: at by Moscow by the Kremlin. So no way that
Speaker 7: I have been corroborating with them since I left the
Speaker 7: country voluntarily more than thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: That's fair, I think, although it does strike me that
Speaker 1: his answer sounds like it could be a little bit rehearsed,
Speaker 1: but then he's probably been asked this question before. Setting
Speaker 1: these downs aside, I'm still intrigued by the thrust of
Speaker 1: what Boris is telling me. To be clear, Boris isn't
Speaker 1: saying Marcelec didn't work for the Russians. He's just saying
Speaker 1: it's more complicated than that. Boris's interpretation is that Marcelek
Speaker 1: is not an agent, but what he describes as a collaborator,
Speaker 1: a kind of top tier freelancer. He thought that he
Speaker 1: could set up his own private.
Speaker 7: Business intelligence organization to do jobs that he thought would
Speaker 7: be interesting for him and for the Russians, because he
Speaker 7: was quite obviously pitching this that kind of operation to
Speaker 7: the Russians, and the Russian said, yes, we might be interested.
Speaker 7: On oh, this is not interested for us at the moment.
Speaker 1: I think there's something in this idea. I don't get
Speaker 1: the impression that Marcelek is just someone taking orders from
Speaker 1: the Russians. I think he has his own agency in
Speaker 1: all of this. There are tantalizing digital traces of Stas
Speaker 1: and Yan's friendship over the years. One I've got in
Speaker 1: my mind in particular sticks out. It's a picture from
Speaker 1: a birthday party Stas's. I think he's got a cake
Speaker 1: in front of him, a huge grin on his face,
Speaker 1: empty wineglasses dot the table, and Yanis sat right next
Speaker 1: to him, leaning towards him. There's an intimacy to it.
Speaker 1: This doesn't seem like the kind of relationship you'd have
Speaker 1: with someone who has blackmailed you or coerced you in
Speaker 1: some other way. So I asked Boris. If Marcelek is
Speaker 1: a freelancer, why might he have wanted to work with
Speaker 1: stas with Russia.
Speaker 7: He would probably be interested to take the Russian side,
Speaker 7: because for him, Russia would be acting properly and more
Speaker 7: correct than the West, for example. And if he were
Speaker 7: offered an offer whether to offer his services to the
Speaker 7: British intelligence or to the Russian intelligence, he psychologically, politically
Speaker 7: and ideologically would probably choose Russia rather than Britain. Why
Speaker 7: do you think that is he was a free, truly
Speaker 7: free man in Russia, or at least that's what he
Speaker 7: thought he was, or he is in Russia while he
Speaker 7: was there. It's not freedom as we understand it. They're
Speaker 7: thinking that living in Moscow, in Moscow specifically, not in Russian.
Speaker 7: In Moscow, they live in an absolutely free society. They
Speaker 7: do what they want.
Speaker 1: It's a sort of freedom of privilege. It's a freedom
Speaker 1: to break a few rules and not be put in jailtely.
Speaker 7: Absolutely correct, absolutely correct, and specifically, when you collaborate with
Speaker 7: intelligence services, you understand that you belong to the elite
Speaker 7: of the society, can do you want and nobody can
Speaker 7: do anything against you.
Speaker 1: Mulling over what Boris has said, the zill lanes in
Speaker 1: Moscow come to mind. They are segregated lanes in Moscow's
Speaker 1: big arterial roads, reserved for the use of the nomenclatura,
Speaker 1: the most important people in the ruling administration. They're a
Speaker 1: symbol of what being in the intelligence and government elite
Speaker 1: in Russia means a different set of rules. Russia is
Speaker 1: still a kind of feudal society where power doesn't flow evenly.
Speaker 1: It coalesces around people, not institutions or laws. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the point to grasp. Marcelet could always operated
Speaker 1: by different rules his own, where he could rules that
Speaker 1: don't constrain his image of self, his freedom and ambission.
Speaker 1: All of this reminds me of what I heard from
Speaker 1: Marcelec's old classmates in Kloster Neuberg. Sat in school in
Speaker 1: the library, in front of that computer whenever he could
Speaker 1: be there, excusing himself from lessons others had to sit through,
Speaker 1: maybe because he was already more capable. There's a big
Speaker 1: gap between leaving home in nineteen ninety eight and fleeing
Speaker 1: to Moscow in twenty twenty years a fugitive though twenty
Speaker 1: two years, and a big psychological jump, because many of
Speaker 1: us have become more afraid of Russia in this period,
Speaker 1: convinced of its malign intentions, unsettled by its persecution of
Speaker 1: dissidence at home, its throttling of democracy, and its hatred
Speaker 1: of liberal values like sexual tolerance, and its actual warmongering.
Speaker 1: For a long time, I struggled to understand how Marcelect
Speaker 1: could have been drawn to all of that. That is,
Speaker 1: until someone got in touch, someone who opened up a
Speaker 1: whole new perspective on where Marcelect's affinity for Russia might
Speaker 1: have come from.
Speaker 4: I was struck because there was one dimension missing here.
Speaker 1: That's coming up after the break. After the Ft first
Speaker 1: outed Marcelek as a Russian asset, I got an interesting
Speaker 1: email from an Austrian historian, Thomas Riegler. Thomas wrote to
Speaker 1: say he'd found an element of the Marterlek story that
Speaker 1: no one else had noticed.
Speaker 2: So far.
Speaker 4: Everybody was like reporting, okay, Jan Marshalik is so fond
Speaker 4: of James bond Jan Marshalik likes military stuff and everything,
Speaker 4: and he really enjoys being an operative in this secret struggle.
Speaker 4: Where does it come from? And here I think his
Speaker 4: personal history comes into play.
Speaker 1: Thomas's passion is spending time in the archives researching spying,
Speaker 1: a subject close to him because it dominates the history
Speaker 1: of the city and the country he lives in.
Speaker 4: There was always this topic of Vienna being a spy capital,
Speaker 4: but nobody actually could say what that meant. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: so my research was always to get to the bottom
Speaker 4: of this. Why is actually Vienna being referred to as
Speaker 4: a spire capital.
Speaker 1: In Austria, spying is basically legal as long as you're
Speaker 1: not doing it against the Austrian state itself. Since it's independence,
Speaker 1: Austria has considered itself a neutual country. A huge debate
Speaker 1: still rages about what that actually means, but one thing
Speaker 1: it's led to is Austria applying an extremely light touch
Speaker 1: when policing the activities of other powers on its own soil.
Speaker 1: It's exactly for that reason that there are so many
Speaker 1: spies in Vienna, because it's the safest city in Europe
Speaker 1: for them to operate in, and there are a lot,
Speaker 1: particularly Russian ones. That's also partly because of where it is.
Speaker 1: Vienna is in the very center of Europe. Atlantic countries,
Speaker 1: the core of that idea we call the West, sometimes
Speaker 1: have a bit of a mental block in grasping this.
Speaker 1: Austria tends to intuitively get labeled as a kind of
Speaker 1: mini Germany, but Vienna, the city that invented the Croissant,
Speaker 1: is closer to Ukraine than it is to France. During
Speaker 1: the Cold War, politically Austria might have been relegated to
Speaker 1: the minor league, but under the surface, Vienna actually became
Speaker 1: a new center of the great hidden geopolitical games of
Speaker 1: the time, and for Russia in particular, it was a
Speaker 1: crucial window into the West.
Speaker 4: It's the kind of a launching pet for operations beyond
Speaker 4: the Iron Curtain. This is like a logistical hub away
Speaker 4: can move people between those blocks.
Speaker 1: It's the Vienna of Graham Green's the Third Man, a
Speaker 1: city of divided loyalties, and this is the world that
Speaker 1: Jan's gran father operated in.
Speaker 4: Two His grandfather, Hans Marshalek, is a very prominent figure
Speaker 4: in Austria because he survived a term and concentration camp
Speaker 4: at Matthausen. He was in the resistance against the Nazi
Speaker 4: regime and he was kind of the first ones actually
Speaker 4: who put together a remembrance culture in Austria.
Speaker 1: In his youth, Hans Marcelek was a Communist. That's not
Speaker 1: exactly unusual in this era. Joining the communists who was
Speaker 1: one of the most effective ways you could stand up
Speaker 1: to Nazism. After the Second World War ended, he helped
Speaker 1: to establish the Malthausen Memorial Museum and he took on
Speaker 1: a senior position in the Vienna State Police. He was
Speaker 1: soon involved with counterintelligence on behalf of the Austrian state.
Speaker 1: But when Thomas started digging into Yan's grandfather's his in
Speaker 1: the Austrian State archives, he found something else.
Speaker 4: I came across the line in a book where the
Speaker 4: author stated that one of the key subordinates of the
Speaker 4: first Vienna State Police chief was this Hans Marshalick. And
Speaker 4: then I thought, okay, I might try my luck and
Speaker 4: get to the archives and ask if there's a dossier
Speaker 4: on Hans Marshalik. And I from my personal experience, I
Speaker 4: was very low keen expectations. And then when I got
Speaker 4: the material. To my great surprise, I must say, there
Speaker 4: was this document laying out the case against Hans Marshalick.
Speaker 1: Thomas still has the records and he's brought them out
Speaker 1: to show me and it's a yeah, it's one two
Speaker 1: three pages And is that like a by lagger an extra? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's five pages, three page letter and then a sort
Speaker 1: of a little appendix of the detail this document, it's
Speaker 1: a declassified political police file from nineteen fifty six, basically
Speaker 1: laying out the dringende Vadakh, the urgent suspicion that Marcelek
Speaker 1: has betrayed his duties in the police and to the
Speaker 1: State of Austria and has informed or given information to
Speaker 1: the Russians. It shows that Hans Marsilek was suspected of
Speaker 1: giving information about four people members of German counterintelligence and
Speaker 1: a CIA informer to the Soviets, and those people were
Speaker 1: subsequently abducted and sent to a gulag. Thomas had found
Speaker 1: that Hans Marcelek, Yan's grandfather was under suspicion of being
Speaker 1: a Russian spy. Yan's grandfather died in twenty eleven when
Speaker 1: Yan was thirty one. Thomas believed that Hans must have
Speaker 1: loomed Lofe in Yan's life.
Speaker 4: Of course, this rich personal history, this man must have
Speaker 4: had an influence on Jan Marshalik, especially when it comes
Speaker 4: to his fascination with the secret world.
Speaker 1: We can't know, but for me it's a powerful idea
Speaker 1: that this man, who we can reasonably say was someone
Speaker 1: of great charisma, a leader, and a figurehead, might have
Speaker 1: exerted some kind of pull on Yan. Yan was, after all,
Speaker 1: largely alienated from his parents, his father who had left
Speaker 1: him as a kid, and his mother who he was
Speaker 1: estranged from. I'm only really just digesting all of this
Speaker 1: when Thomas tells me something else. He also has information
Speaker 1: about Staz Petlinsky, the Russian associated with the Giu, the
Speaker 1: guy on the yacht.
Speaker 4: His own grandfather was a KHB officer stationed in Guienna.
Speaker 4: Vidon'te xext proof of that, but it looks like it
Speaker 4: is the case. Yeah, the grandfather of this Russian operative
Speaker 4: was stationed in Vienna, and that he most likely met
Speaker 4: with Hans Marshalik, and that he caltivated Tim as a sauce.
Speaker 1: Thomas is saying that not only was Yan Marsceleck's grandfather,
Speaker 1: Hans likely a Russian spy, but that also Staz's grandfather
Speaker 1: was a Soviet intelligence officer based in Vienna too, and
Speaker 1: Thomas feels that he would have very likely come into
Speaker 1: contact with Yan's grandfather and may even have recruited him.
Speaker 1: This is based on his knowledge of how Russia's intelligence
Speaker 1: agencies were operating in Vienna at this time, which is
Speaker 1: that's just a remarkable historical coincidence, isn't it? Or is
Speaker 1: it more than a coincidence that these kind of things
Speaker 1: only happen because they're almost they were meant to happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it looks like the ingredients of a really grand
Speaker 4: spy story because this ties together the Cold War as
Speaker 4: the new one. And maybe that's just a speculation. There
Speaker 4: was some sort of inuitiation going on here, like an
Speaker 4: introduction was made.
Speaker 1: I mean, is that that's not too fanciful.
Speaker 4: It's not unsinkable. I mean, it's at this point it's
Speaker 4: just pure speculation. But you have to remember that the
Speaker 4: way Russian intelligence works, the trust is built upon such introductions.
Speaker 1: It's hard to weigh the significance of all this because
Speaker 1: ultimately I can't tell you what Jan Marselek did or
Speaker 1: didn't know about his grandfather's past, nor what the Russians
Speaker 1: knew about it. But I do know that Russia's intelligence
Speaker 1: services have long institutional memories. They pay very close attention
Speaker 1: to their own archives all Russian intelligence offices. They spend
Speaker 1: years learning about past successes and failures as part of
Speaker 1: their either way. As Thomas shared all this with me,
Speaker 1: I realized I had been thinking of grandson Yan and
Speaker 1: grandfather Hans as inhabiting radically different worlds. After all, Hands
Speaker 1: lived through the Cold War, whereas Yan, I'd thought of
Speaker 1: him as someone largely motivated by money and glamour in
Speaker 1: a post ideological age. But I'm starting to see another
Speaker 1: side of things, and Thomas does too.
Speaker 4: I would say that we are actually at the doorstep
Speaker 4: of a new ideological war where this counts again as
Speaker 4: a motive for becoming an agent, for becoming an informer,
Speaker 4: because you want to contribute in this geopolitical power struggle
Speaker 4: going on between East and West. And this is a
Speaker 4: dangerous situation because those spies tend to be the better ones,
Speaker 4: better than the guys who do it solely for money.
Speaker 1: How would you describe this new ideological fault line?
Speaker 8: What is it?
Speaker 4: I would say, of course Russia is not the Soviet Union,
Speaker 4: but it's mostly like a pans leavistic, imperialistic outlook. But
Speaker 4: it's also very much set against liberalism against the West
Speaker 4: in general terms, and people are choosing their sides in
Speaker 4: this struggle.
Speaker 1: Maybe ideology is a bit of a misnomer. I think
Speaker 1: the German word veltan schaog is kind of better here.
Speaker 1: It means worldview, the subtle difference being that veltan schawang
Speaker 1: is not so much about political theory as it is
Speaker 1: about behavior. This anti liberal order that Putin stands for
Speaker 1: and that Russia in some way represents. It's easy to
Speaker 1: write that off as evil, but that's not necessarily where
Speaker 1: it comes from. It's really about the fact that Putin
Speaker 1: and others believe the post war legal ordering of the
Speaker 1: world is a failure, that liberalism is just a costume
Speaker 1: worn by the West to make us feel good about ourselves,
Speaker 1: and that the best way to stand up for national
Speaker 1: interests and ultimately for a more peaceful world is strength authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: It's a worldview partly conditioned by Soviet thinking, too, that
Speaker 1: war and peace don't really exist. Everything instead is just
Speaker 1: constant struggle, And maybe on an individual level. For Marsilek,
Speaker 1: it sort of fits with this idea that laws rules,
Speaker 1: corporate accounting practices, they're there to be broken if needed.
Speaker 1: This kind of worldview, it's not really an ideology someone
Speaker 1: can learn in a book or from a political speech.
Speaker 1: Something you feel pick up over time. It's something that
Speaker 1: inspires you to act. Coming up next time on Hot Money, he.
Speaker 8: Knew that the information based on the anonymous letters was
Speaker 8: never enough for the judiciary to take measures. What has
Speaker 8: changed meantime suddenly that was the cause.
Speaker 1: Actually now this sort of shows that they both have
Speaker 1: a common employer, which is jan Master. They were all
Speaker 1: plotting together exactly from.
Speaker 5: The perspective of puttin what would be great to have
Speaker 5: in Europe a country as a door to infiltrate whole
Speaker 5: Europe and there install your people.
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 shakerge fact checking by Kira Levigne,
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