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The Journal.

'The Ultimate Confidence Trickster': The Double Life of a Tech Exec

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Business News, News, Daily News

4.25.8K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For more than three years, Jan Marsalek has been on the run. He was the jet-setting COO of Wirecard, the German company that imploded after a financial fraud scandal. But now, Western intelligence and security officials are saying Marsalek had likely been a Russian spy for nearly a decade. WSJ's Bojan Pancevski tells the tale of the investigations into Marsalek's covert operations. Further Listening: - Wirecard's Missing $2 Billion Further Reading: - He’s Wanted for Wirecard’s Missing $2 Billion. He’s Now Suspected of Being a Russian Spy. - U.K. Says Wirecard’s Marsalek Worked With Five Suspected Russian Spies - How Wirecard Went From Tech Star to Bankrupt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

It was the summer of 2020 and a man named Jan Marcelech needed to disappear.

0:12.0

The company that Marcelech helped lead was crash. needed to disappear.

0:12.7

The company that Marcelic helped lead was crashing down.

0:17.3

Billions of dollars had disappeared and authorities were alleging a financial conspiracy. It was a ponzi scheme, it was a fraud, and in the end it collapsed because it was missing

0:29.2

almost $2 billion from its balance sheet.

0:33.0

Law enforcement was closing in.

0:37.0

And so under cover of night, Marcelek fled.

0:41.0

Hours before a arrest warrant was issued, Maiselleck boarded a private jet from a small Austrian provincial airport and this airplane took him to Minsk.

0:59.0

From Minsk the capital of Belarus, Marcelek moved again.

1:04.4

He was picked up in a car by the internal secret service of Russia, the FSB, and he was kind of chauffeur all the

1:11.4

way to Moscow.

1:13.6

Why Moscow?

1:15.5

That's because intelligence agencies now say

1:18.3

that Marcelect was not just involved in financial fraud.

1:21.6

He was also a Russian spy.

1:26.0

Since Marcellac fled more than three years ago,

1:29.0

authorities have been hunting him down.

1:31.0

Our colleague Bojan Panchevsky has been following Marcelle's story.

1:35.0

Well it's a rather extraordinary story about the biggest financial fraud in recent European

1:42.0

history.

1:43.6

It's a story about one of the most wanted man in the world.

1:48.8

And it's a story about Russian espionage

...

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