A former Austrian intelligence official was convicted Wednesday of spying for Russia in the largest espionage trial in Austria’s postwar history, delivering a verdict that officials hope will help repair the country’s standing as a hub of hostile foreign intelligence activity, the Financial Times said.

An eight-person jury in Vienna found Egisto Ott guilty of espionage, abuse of office, and embezzlement, acquitting him on one fraud charge. Ott served as deputy to Austria’s former head of counter-intelligence, Martin Weiss, and was a key figure in the espionage network of Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of collapsed German payments company Wirecard who fled to Russia in 2020, the FT reported. 

Wirecard, once Europe’s leading financial technology company, imploded after the FT exposed a massive fraud at the firm. Marsalek, who is widely believed to have been a Russian intelligence asset, is thought to have had connections to the FSB since at least 2014. Chat messages seized by British authorities link him directly to the Russian spy agency, the Associated Press said.

Prosecutors brought 119 separate accusations against Ott, alleging he acted as procurer, logistician, technical expert, and adviser for Weiss and Marsalek between 2017 and 2021, systematically accessing sensitive information from classified Austrian databases and passing it to Russian operatives, the FT reported. The material included intelligence related to former Russian spies and Bellingcat investigative journalist Christo Grozev.

The case involved a series of operations that the AP described as worthy of a spy novel. In one instance, Ott allegedly supplied Marsalek with Grozev’s Vienna address, after which Marsalek commissioned a team to break into the journalist’s apartment and steal a laptop and USB stick. Grozev, who had tracked down Russian officers implicated in the poisonings of former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and opposition leader Alexei Navalny, later relocated from Vienna after Austrian authorities told him they could no longer guarantee his security.

Ott also purportedly helped Marsalek smuggle a stolen SINA computer—a device used by European governments to transmit classified information—to Moscow. After a handover at the same Vienna apartment, Marsalek sent a message confirming the device had been successfully delivered to the Lubyanka, the FSB’s Moscow headquarters, according to prosecutors cited by the AP. 

All the while, Marsalek was exploiting his role at the fintech giant to mastermind a €2-billion fraud and siphon corporate funds to pay for overseas investments and intelligence activities on behalf of Russia. 

A 2025 FT investigation found that Wirecard served as more than a corporate cover for Marsalek. It was the financial engine behind his covert activities. In one documented instance, Wirecard’s own board approved $10 million in funding for what Marsalek presented as an investment project called “Project Phoenix.” The money was routed through a Singapore-based entity and a Swiss lawyer’s Dubai account into an Isle of Man-registered vehicle, ultimately funding Marsalek’s hidden stake in a Libyan drilling rig company worth more than $80 million. 

Marsalek’s name appeared nowhere in the official corporate structure. Instead, layers of shell companies and frontmen obscured his role as the true beneficiary, a model he applied repeatedly across his business dealings, the FT said.