European businessman Jan Marsalek is suspected of having embezzled billions of euros. He also helped the FSB and praised Russia. He fled to Moscow. We tracked him down.

Der Spiegel cooperated with The Insider, an independent exiled Russian media outlet, on this investigation. Here is its English article fyi:

Our Jan in Moscow: The secret Russian life of Europe’s most notorious fugitive-turned-spy

Older report on Marsalek are here if interested.

Damn. The amount of leaked data

Even aside from the whole “fraud and running off with billions of euros” thing, the fact that he was working for Russian intelligence while running a large fintech company in Europe seems like a concern. First, financial transaction data seems sensitive. Second:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard

Wirecard was founded in 1999 and took care of the technical processing of credit card payments for online vendors. According to the Spiegel, its clientele initially “consisted primarily of porno and gambling sites”.[13] In 2002, when it was close to folding at the end of the dot-com bubble, Markus Braun injected capital and joined as CEO. He consolidated the company and focused the business model on providing internet payment services, initially mainly to porn and gambling websites.[14]

Gambling transactions are one way to launder money.

A face worth remembering, certainly.