WEBVTT - Episode 3: Thrill Seeking 0:00:02.080 --> 0:00:04.440 Before we begin, I just wanted to warn you this 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:13.000 episode contains descriptions of physical violence and war. Previously on 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:14.760 Hot Money, at. 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:16.920 That point, we just kind of had this sense that 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:21.239 Marcello was this kind of man of action and was 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.079 mixed up somehow in Viennese politics. 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:28.880 I know politics is corrupt, I know everything. I know that, 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:30.680 I know that I believed to know that, but this 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:32.640 is too much, I thought. 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.360 I hope that he will talk to you and you 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:40.040 will be able to investigate on it and perps misdeeds 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:42.680 and misbehavior stopped. 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:58.000 I'm in tunis, the capital of Tunisia in North Africa. 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.480 I'm in a taxi on the way to meet Killian Klinsmith. 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.320 When I first met Killian at Cafe Procul in Vienna, 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.200 he began to unravel what he knew about Jan Marcelet. 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:13.640 It was a fantastical tale. It seemed impossible to substantiate, 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:17.360 and as far as Killian was concerned at the time, 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:22.760 it was absolutely not for publication. But I believed it, 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:25.520 and one of the reasons I did was because I 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.600 found out more about who Killian is, not just a fantasist, 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:38.800 someone who should be taken deadly seriously yes, monsieur. We 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:42.480 kept in touch and now he's ready to talk to 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:46.320 me on tape. I can't tell you exactly where he lives. 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.680 In fact, we've put our phones in Faraday bags to 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:53.080 come here, electromagnetic shields that will stop the phones giving 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:57.279 away our location. Everything on this trip will be cash only. 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.640 But what I'll say is it's a big private house 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:03.080 on the edge of a fashionable area of the city. 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.760 It's surrounded by a high white wall, like all the 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:10.080 houses on this dusty street, and there are great clumps 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:12.520 of magenta bouganvillia spilling over the top. 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:17.400 It is this way. 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:27.760 Ay Killian, I learned, has never led a conventional life. 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:30.720 I'm not even sure he knows what one is, and 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:33.800 perhaps that's why he ended up getting so involved in 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:37.880 one of Jan marsal X's wildest schemes, something so left 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:42.760 field that it helped me truly see marsal x ambitions 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.640 something about the lives of tens of thousands of the 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:50.200 world's most desperate people and how they might be controlled used. 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.000 I've often found that people who operate outside the mainstream 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:59.679 can be weirdly drawn together, sometimes meeting in the ambiguous 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.600 space between what the world deems to be good and bad. 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:06.360 We tend to think that our values are at the 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.840 core of us, but people on the edge, well, they 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:12.480 can sometimes show us how fragile that notion can be. 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.880 In this episode, we're gonna hear Killian's story and how 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:22.440 he found himself in Yan marslex world one very close 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:24.520 but very different to his own. 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:30.400 I have said this census that certain things in my 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:35.320 life since then have done terribly wrong that I sometimes 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:37.400 think this can be a core incidence. 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.920 I'm Sam Jones from The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.880 This is Hot Money, Season three, Agent of Chaos, Episode 0:03:48.960 --> 0:04:02.280 three Prill Seeking, So where do you want us? Killian, 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:08.760 as we call them. We're walking across a big, open 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.720 plan room that takes up almost the whole ground floor. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.560 It's cool and airy, and Killian is directing us over 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.479 to an arrangement of low sofas around a coffee table. 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.960 He's left the dogs outside, but indoors, there's an assortment 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.599 of cats who indifferently reveal themselves to us over the 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:30.640 next few hours. Killian grew up in Berlin in the 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.880 nineteen seventies, and he felt drawn to alternative ways of 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:39.840 life from a young age. After some hard partying as 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.279 a young punk teen, he left Germany aged just eighteen 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.360 to go and live in the mountains in southern France. 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:51.120 And so first there were the goats, thirty five goats 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:52.279 to be exact. 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:54.880 Making gold cheese, which is a pain in the neck 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:56.559 because you have to get up at four in the morning, 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.799 five in the morning melting these bloody goats. 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.760 So your first job was as a goat farmer basically. 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:03.080 Yes. 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.599 Later he founded a housing cooperative, learned how to be 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.480 a roofer and picked up a series of odd jobs 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:11.120 along the way. 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:17.200 Worked as a stuntman somehow Any five Movies We Might 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.720 Know or How was a TV series Jan dach. 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.719 Jehan dark as in Joan of harc Yes, okay, but 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.039 Killian was still restless. He left France and he decided 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.080 to tour Africa on a motorbike, and in doing that 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.200 he stumbled into humanitarian and peacekeeping work through a chance 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.960 encounter over what else but drinks. 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.560 I always tell people when they asked me how did 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:42.920 you do your career? I mean how do you apply it? 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:44.600 So that said, they got into the baths. 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.320 These are my favorite kind of stories. In a bar 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.159 in Mopti, a city in Marley, Killian met a young 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.559 French couple. They were building a school and he well, 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.160 he had those roofing skills, so he helped them out 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.159 and things just took off from there. He got more 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:05.560 construction jobs in the AID world. His responsibilities grew. Eventually, 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:09.880 Killian became a trusted partner for the un working across Africa. 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.680 He'd found the unconventional life he was looking for, but 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:18.479 he'd yet to experience real danger, and then one day 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:24.599 all that changed. In nineteen ninety one, Killian was twenty 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:29.440 nine with a young family. They were living happily in Uganda. 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.640 It was early in the morning, so he didn't hear 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:38.039 them come in, four men armed. He woke up his 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:41.880 wife next to him with a kalashnikov pressed against his head. 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.520 Someone had told these four boys, really that he had 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.400 thirty thousand dollars hidden in the house. It was a setup. 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:53.800 And then they did everything with me what you can 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.039 do to someone who tried to get thirty thousand dollars. 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.600 From as in they beat you up. 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.360 Or beating me up, putting me against the wall and 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:05.960 saying now we shoot in your legs, Now we rape 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:10.560 your wife. We've just killed your gardener. We're just oh, 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:12.600 by the way, we killed your cook. Now we're going 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:14.880 to kill your baby or baby crying. 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.200 I mean, in that moment, did you think you were 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:17.760 going to die? 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:21.800 Yes, because at the four guys looking for something they 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.760 don't get, getting increasingly agitated and angry. 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:26.600 That's it. 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.640 They turned the house upside down. The money, of course, 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.360 wasn't there, but for whatever reason, they didn't kill Killian. 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:39.120 In fact, thankfully they didn't kill anyone. They just left 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:43.840 Killian badly beaten up. The horror of that experience would 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.960 have broken most people, and maybe it did Killian, but 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.880 not how you would expect. I guess most other people, 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.680 or many other people would think, Okay, that's it. I'm 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:57.600 moving back to the Pyrenees with my wife and my 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.320 young child. I'm guessing that you didn't do that. 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.640 Yeah, that's kind of correct. My wife said, I headed 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.560 I need a break somehow, and then she left for 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:12.680 Canada for many months, and I went and said, now 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.360 I need to go into it. I need to deep 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.440 dive into violence. 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:26.600 And he did. In the coming years, Killian would put himself, 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.600 using his connections in the un into the most dangerous 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.840 places he could. When the fighting died down in one place, 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:36.480 he moved somewhere else, often somewhere with an even more 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:43.960 challenging humanitarian situation. South Sudan, Somalia, Zaia, Sri Lanka. He 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:47.959 describes days hiding in swamps while being hunted by militias. 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.079 I was surrounded by war, I was surrounded by guns. 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.119 Everything I was in fact afraid of or was there plentiful. 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.200 I mean I had sort of transformed from the soft 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:05.400 gold keeping hippie guy into a tough sort of manager 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:08.400 him in the middle of the war. And in transformation 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.560 goes pretty fast, I must say. 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.280 He told me about one time his compound in Mogadishu 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:14.960 was attacked. 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:19.800 When we get out of the banker, security says it's 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:21.480 all over, but. 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:24.000 There's one guy lying in the street in an army uniform, 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:28.199 and too late they realize he's a suicide bomber, and. 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:30.840 He pulls the trigger and then and then sort of 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:33.199 all the body pads fly over the. 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:35.959 Wall and the rain between us. 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:43.079 So today, when there's a dead mouse somewhere, that's when 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:46.240 everything comes back. That's when the images come back of 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:48.040 dead bodies on the road. 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:52.120 In another story, he tells me it's the height of 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.200 the battle for control of Mogadishu when he and a 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:57.920 few others climb up onto the roof of the hotel 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.600 where they're staying at dusk, heavy orange sun is in 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:02.040 the sky. 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:05.079 So we were sitting there with a few people having 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.520 a beer or whiskey or so, which we've still managed 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:09.800 to get and. 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:10.680 Watching the fighting. 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:16.320 I mean, what's crazily wild, pervertly romantic in the same time, 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:20.280 like watching Apocalypse Now or something. We're seeing the black 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.960 Hawks and other choppers flying into the sunset and then 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:28.400 again fighting somewhere and shooting, and you're sitting on your 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:29.679 roof and over you're whiskey. 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:35.080 The horror, it's also bound up with the thrill, with 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.000 the sense that this, and not the comforts of a 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.520 peaceful home life, is what's real. And I do get it. 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:47.560 Even listening to Killian recount this stuff is intoxicating. There's 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:51.840 a powerful, hugely seductive kind of beauty to it. It's 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:57.440 disturbing in some ways, but also cinematic. And who hasn't 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.240 thought about their lives as a film? Can I just ask, 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:04.679 how are you feeling during this? Were you afraid? I mean, 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.440 given that you've described earlier that in a way you 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:12.000 wanted to plunge into violence to cure yourself with your 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:15.240 fear of it maybe or to somehow kind of move 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:15.920 beyond it. 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:17.640 I mean that's also what to maintain. 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.000 Organizations are exploiting in a way because they're getting people 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:26.040 into the sort of this adrenaline hyper thing and they 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:30.920 begin to feel invincible. You're becoming the coolest of the 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.160 coolest in all of this. I mean, you're completely hyped up. 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.959 I mean I started to feel already very good at this. 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.760 That was just basically after two and a half years 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.240 of being in war zones, and it felt I was 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:45.840 a champion. 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:47.319 It sounds like a bit of an addiction. 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:50.120 It's, of course it's an addiction, and that's but it's 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:51.840 been also used by the organization. 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:56.440 The organization meaning the un his employer at the time. 0:11:57.280 --> 0:11:59.000 This is how Killian sees it. 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:04.400 Identifying the people becoming junkies, and they set them a 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:08.280 shot from time to time, so they stay junkies. You 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:11.880 don't get the chance to cool down and get back 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:13.720 to your family. I mean I had a family at 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:19.199 the time, sitting in there. Robit that recuperation becomes stressful 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:22.679 because nobody understands you. I mean, your colleagues become your 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.760 friends and your family. They understand what it means when 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.440 you say, well, we had an ied, we had an 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:33.480 improvised explosive device, or we had a vbi ID. They 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:36.720 understand what it means. Yes, there has been a car bomb. 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:43.640 Nobody else understands. Nobody understands the feeling of what it means. 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.760 Killian climbs the UN ladder, but over time he finds 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:54.520 his Maverick methods rub up against an increasingly bureaucratic organization, 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.280 and the way humanitarian work is funded is changing too. 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.640 NGO and government budgets are going down, the private sector 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.880 institutions and individual wealthy donors are becoming more important than ever. 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:12.440 Over time, Killian begins to feel that perhaps he should 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.960 at least try a more normal way of life, so 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:20.280 after three decades, finally in twenty fourteen, Killian decides to 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.600 leave the UN. He settles in Vienna as far as 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:29.320 he can settle, and launches an aid consultancy. A burgeoning 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.280 migrant crisis on Europe's borders and in the Balkans in particular, 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.400 means he's in high demand, but he doesn't exactly thrill 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:41.360 to the work. European governments are mostly looking to find 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:44.959 short term domestic solutions for the problem. They don't want 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.840 to do the hard stuff tackling it at its source 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.760 in Africa and the Middle East. The consultancy work is 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:55.920 all about fundraising, meetings with stakeholders, trial a la over 0:13:56.000 --> 0:14:00.240 canopies and powerpoints. It's not a very Killian kind of world. 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:05.760 Enter Jan Marcelek. It was around this time that an 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:10.319 Austrian lobbyist government connected got in touch. He tells Killian, 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:12.000 I want you to meet someone. 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:16.959 I have a client called Jan Masele. He's the CEO 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:21.120 of Wire Cards. That is, in his private capacity, he 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.240 wants to contribute to the stabilization of Libya. 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.120 In twenty eighteen, Killian gets an invitation to come and 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:46.800 meet his new prospective backer, Marcelek. Marcelex suggests they meet 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:49.680 at the keef Schenker, the very place he met my 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.640 editor Paul Murphy and handed him the chemical formula for Navechok. 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:59.240 Keifa Schhenk in English means the ladybird tavern lady barg 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.800 If you're American, there are little ladybird emblems and pictures 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:06.440 dotted around, but it's not Kitchie. This is still a 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:11.920 white tablecloth place. All Killian knows is that he's meeting 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.840 a wealthy Austrian businessman. He's never heard of Yan Marslek, 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:19.280 but that's not an issue, at least nothing A little 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:21.080 keyboard due diligence can't smooth. 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:27.600 Started googling a bit and okay, a big luge DAX company. 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:32.200 The DAX is Germany's main stock market index, the forty 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.640 largest public German companies. A bit like the S and 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:39.360 P five hundred or the Footsy one hundred. It signals 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:43.320 to Killian that wirecard and mars Lek should be taken seriously. 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:47.160 I had been sort of a lot looking into how 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:53.280 the industry, how business can actually do what the humanitarance 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.880 can do. So I thought was a great idea that 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:02.560 if somebody has personal interests or business interests actually contributes, 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:07.480 and it's not the humanitarians are going to stabilize places, 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:13.520 it's business. It's this type of other resources which the 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:15.520 humanitarian world will never produce. 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.800 Killian has been told that Marcelek is interested in funding 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:27.280 humanitarian projects in Libya. Libya was a mess since the 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.600 Kadafi regime was deposed in twenty eleven at the height 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.760 of the Arab Spring. It had been mired in civil war. 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:38.600 Nothing about its future seemed at that point certain, and 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:42.400 it was also thanks to its newfound lawlessness, a highway 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:46.280 for African refugees looking to get into Europe, the longest 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:50.680 then unpatrolled coastline of any African country on the Mediterranean. 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.600 A reporter with the ft Borzu Daragahi was on the 0:16:57.600 --> 0:16:59.960 ground to see what conditions in one of the countries 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:02.680 notorious migrant detention centers were like. 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.320 Hot, dirty, Overcrowded cells like this one are a way 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.080 of life. At the Garabouli migrant detention Center, just east 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:16.160 of Libya's capital, Tripoli, rooms meant for perhaps twenty people 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:20.119 are commonly filled with one hundred. These men, women and 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.760 children have come from as far as Eritrea and Ethiopia. 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:28.040 They risk their lives along desert smuggling routes lined with 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:30.159 bandits and other dangers. 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:34.320 But Libya was also a place rich in opportunities for 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:39.160 those with an appetite for danger. A huge oil exporting nation, 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:44.240 a major military power in Africa, a playground for spies, 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:52.360 the prospect of some work there tantalized Kilian. Marcelek arrives 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:54.560 for lunch. He's all Polish. 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:56.720 They got a little bit jealous. 0:17:56.920 --> 0:18:00.480 While the sky is bier de mere and he is 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.560 good looking, and he is well dressed. Everything he has 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:08.320 smells money and care and everything is perfect. 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.960 And I come with my cheap trousers and whatnot. 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.879 A little envy prompts some German Austrian rivalry. 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:22.560 Well, there's a typical Austrian sort of showing off person. 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:24.639 I've seen many of those in Vienna. 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:30.119 Over lunch, the conversation becomes competitive, what. 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:34.199 They call alas the male cockfight. In the beginning, they 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:37.480 try to impress the other one of how cool you 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:39.439 are and how tough you are, and where you have 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:40.360 been and so on. 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:41.880 This is you and Marcelec. 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:45.040 You know how two cocks are when they're showing the 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:46.760 nice feathers and so on. 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:53.840 Killian tells Marcelec stories. He recounts the dangerous, violent and 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.960 volatile situations he has lived in around the world. But 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.760 Marcelek is not to be outdone. 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:06.119 And then very fast actually he started then talking about 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:11.439 his experience in Syria, facilitated by the boys. Just after 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:16.480 the recapture of the city of Panira from Isis. 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:19.000 When he said, with the boys, what did you now? 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:21.480 He basically said, with the Russians. 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:28.000 Marcelek tells Killian that he arrived in Syria in a migate. 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.520 He describes how the helicopter banked and turned, and with 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:35.200 a blast of dry hot air through the open door, 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:38.919 he looked down on the vast ruins of Roman Palmyra below. 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:41.840 He was the guest of the head of intelligence for 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:47.000 the Wagner Group, Russia's most notorious mercenary army. They didn't linger, 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.480 Marcelex said it was too dangerous, but there was time 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:55.360 for some photos. I've seen those photos. There's a hastily 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:59.600 snapped selfie in front of the amphitheater, and another shot 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:02.520 in in front of a burned out tank, and one 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.439 of him aiming a bazooka. In all of them, Marcelek 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:10.760 is posing basically in body armor and sometimes wearing dark 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:16.920 blue aviators. To me, he seems almost boyishly excited. What's 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:21.200 remarkable is that Marcelek's story, all this boasting about being 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:24.879 in Syria didn't strike Killian as unusual at the time. 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.679 But Killian is not a very usual kind of person. 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.879 It didn't click in my head that it's a bit 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.400 strange that a payment provider would be going into such 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:36.840 an area. 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.320 If it had clicked, maybe he could have avoided what 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:46.560 happened next. I can only assume Killian wasn't taken aback 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:51.360 because of the way Marcelek framed the story. He told 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:54.960 Killian that when he saw war ravage Syria for himself, 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:57.760 he realized he wanted to stop that kind of thing 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:03.320 from happening elsewhere, like in Libya. Marcelett convinced Killian that 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.800 he wanted to make a difference to make the world 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:09.639 a better place. As Killian understood it, Marcelett wanted to 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:13.399 commission a development plan, a blueprint for how to end 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:17.640 lawlessness on Libya's southern border where there was no government control. 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:21.080 He spoke about the gold mines at the border to 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.679 Chat where people have to work for two years to 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:27.439 get their passage to Europe paid off. He spoke about 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.240 the guys sitting in Monaco and being the people behind 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:35.920 the whole business, that they were earning one hundred dollars 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:40.919 per person crossing into Europe. He displayed sort of a 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:46.000 more emotional something has to be done to stop out 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:46.400 of that. 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:54.679 And maybe I felt that he was genuine in that. 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:57.320 Somehow he sounds quite impressive. 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:01.439 It didn't click as sort of a police ploid at 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:04.520 that moment. It felt more, Yes, I want to do something. 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:06.760 I want to contribute, so I will put two hundred 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.679 thousand euros into your Killian and your team so that 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:15.240 there should be collateral financing to have a full plan 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:18.639 of what to do with Libya so that this doesn't happen. 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:23.880 Killian came away from his first lunch with Jan Marsleg 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:27.200 feeling good about his new project and his new client. 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.040 He built a team and he got to work doing 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:33.960 research and making plans to pull together a kind of 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:37.119 feasibility study on how to bring law and order to 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:40.240 the region and improve the lives of the people living there, 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.320 who to speak to and what to say to them. 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:46.359 But it wasn't long before there were signs that not 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:49.639 all was as it seemed. Killian had been told that 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:53.480 he could trust Marcelec's handshake and that Marcelec wouldn't sign 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:57.400 a contract anyway, so there wasn't much Killian could do 0:22:57.520 --> 0:22:59.880 about what happened next. 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:03.000 Then no money. There was no payment for me. 0:23:03.760 --> 0:23:06.160 I mean, did it not strike you as odd that 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:10.920 there's this. There's this wealthy backer who has money and 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:12.800 he's just not not paying. 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:14.520 Yes, of course, I said, what's this? I mean, you 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:19.200 told me it's undshake quality. Finally engaged with our the contracts. 0:23:19.200 --> 0:23:21.800 Should have never done this, big mistake. 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:28.159 At this point, Killian is still dealing with marcele X 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:32.520 through an intermediary marcele X's lobbyist in Vienna, and after 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:36.240 a lot of pestering about the missing finance, the intermediary 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:40.920 gives him a very strange answer. He says, send your 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:47.119 invoice to the Libyan Russian Institute in Moscow, which is 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.760 odd because no such institute even seems to exist there. 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:55.399 There's more. When Killian suggests that they should organize a 0:23:55.400 --> 0:23:57.960 trip to Libya so he can talk to his backer 0:23:58.000 --> 0:24:00.400 about his plans and show him how they might work 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:03.720 on the ground. He gets told this will also be arranged, 0:24:04.200 --> 0:24:05.800 but from Moscow. 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:13.000 The trip will be organized by Colonel tribly Gin under 0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:18.040 the Triblean in Moscow. So who was colonel and the Triblegian, Oh, 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:23.159 here's the coordinator of Russian interests in Northern Africa and 0:24:23.240 --> 0:24:24.040 the Middle East. 0:24:25.600 --> 0:24:28.640 By now I'm thinking for almost anyone, the jig would 0:24:28.640 --> 0:24:32.200 be up. Whatever this project was, it was not simply 0:24:32.240 --> 0:24:34.840 some idea from an Austrian businessman with a good heart 0:24:34.920 --> 0:24:39.399 and an open checkbook. Killian, though, still didn't pull the plug, 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:43.280 maybe because at this point he's already paid his team 0:24:43.320 --> 0:24:46.879 a considerable amount of money from his own pocket, and 0:24:46.920 --> 0:24:49.320 he's really quite proud of the work they've done, the 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:53.160 study they've begun to produce. So he needs to sort 0:24:53.200 --> 0:24:55.720 things out one way or the other, and the only 0:24:55.760 --> 0:24:58.520 way to do that is to demand another face to 0:24:58.560 --> 0:25:08.240 face meeting with Mas. And that's how. In February twenty eighteen, 0:25:08.720 --> 0:25:12.040 Killian finds himself standing on a street corner in a 0:25:12.040 --> 0:25:15.240 wealthy district of Munich. On the opposite side of the 0:25:15.240 --> 0:25:19.879 street is the Russian Consulate. He's waiting directly outside a grand, 0:25:20.119 --> 0:25:23.879 four story Grundadzite nineteenth century villa. 0:25:24.320 --> 0:25:27.000 One of these big mansions will find in Vienna, you 0:25:27.000 --> 0:25:29.600 will find in Munich, you will find in all the 0:25:29.640 --> 0:25:36.480 century of European cities where very wealthy business families built us. 0:25:36.600 --> 0:25:40.000 At some point, it's so big he struggles to figure 0:25:40.040 --> 0:25:42.480 out how to get in. There doesn't seem to be 0:25:42.520 --> 0:25:44.240 a doorbell when. 0:25:44.560 --> 0:25:49.320 Somehow the doors of the villa they open mysteriously. 0:25:50.400 --> 0:25:56.520 This is Jan Marcelek's house and personal office. Marcelect meets Killian, 0:25:56.600 --> 0:25:59.720