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