Episode 2: The Friendship Society

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Previously on Hot Money,

I felt I'd met somebody who was very controlled and confident, who was almost certainly corrupt.

I basically said, can we do that again?

My first thing is I sort of go home and obsessively change every single one of my passwords.

Start checking all the security on my house.

You do start to worry what you've sort of brought down on your family.

We already knew that there was a big Vienna angle to all this.

We just didn't know what the angle was.

I remember thinking you were mad.

I just thought, okay, alright, I'm just going to go to Austria and start talking to people about Jam Marcelek, but you know, you were right.

Julian Hesenthaler races from one supermarket to another.

He's sweating.

It's not just the heat.

He's nervous.

He's hosting an important gathering tonight, and everything needs to be just right, right, including the drinks.

Which everybody thinks super easy, but just go to a supermarket, buy drinks.

I was expecting Ibiza, and I mean, you can get anything, any high-class drink you want.

It was actually quite difficult.

Julian's from Austria, but right now he's on the Spanish island of Ibiza.

He's looking for a particular type of champagne, Armand de Brignac.

Jay-Z owns the brand.

It's a cuvet that starts at £300 a pop.

Julian knows it's the favourite of one of tonight's most important guests.

But it seems to be too exclusive even for this global party hub, and he can't find it.

He settles for Rodura, the priciest he can get in this shop.

He pays for the drinks from a huge wad of bills in his pocket and lugs them out to the car.

He's driving a BMW convertible.

He can't afford it, but he needs to keep up appearances.

He winces as he heads back along a bumpy track.

And I remember driving over that and all the time hitting the bottom of the car and thinking, oh my god, I'm damaging this car so bad.

Back at the villa he's rented for the party, he puts the drinks in the fridge and then jumps in the pool to cool down and calm his nerves.

He showers and dresses for the evening.

Then Julian does one final check of the cameras he's hidden around the property.

They're in light switches, phone chargers and coffee cups.

There's one tucked into a beach bag by the pool.

He waits for his guests to arrive.

Julian is a private investigator.

Back then, he was 36 years old.

He didn't know it at the time, but that day, that party, was the beginning of a huge scandal that would change his life forever.

I'm Sam Jones, a journalist with the Financial Times.

In May 2019, I arrived in Vienna with a request from my old editor, Paul Murphy, to look for any information I could find about Jan Marcelek, a globe-trotting international businessman, a billion-dollar fraudster, and someone who had revealed to us that these two things might actually be the least interesting things about him.

As I touched down in Austria, a political scandal exploded, precipitated by the video footage that Julian would film in that Ibithan villa.

It was chaos and I was barely able to think about Marcelek.

No one I spoke to knew him and no one in Austria even seemed seemed to have heard of Wirecard.

But as it turned out, this scandal, the scandal I'm going to tell you about in this episode, it would lead me to understand who Jan Marcelek really was and what he was doing.

Because the Abitha affair would reveal a world that invites people like Jan Marcelek in.

A world in which people like him can thrive.

A world of corruption and patronage.

Spy stories, they often tell us as much about ourselves as they do about a rogue individual.

They're a dark mirror on the failings of our own politics, our own societies.

Julian's video would force the issue of Russian influence in Central Europe out into the open.

It would show me a cast of characters who'd been operating in the shadows and begin to reveal how Jan Marcelek moved among them.

From the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries, this is Hot Money Season 3: Agent of Chaos, Episode 2: The Friendship Society.

For Julian, the whole thing started with a drinking buddy, a lawyer friend.

One time, after a few vodkas, this lawyer tells Julian about one of his clients.

The client, he says, has evidence of something big.

Scandalous.

Rampant corruption, at the very top of one of Austria's biggest political parties, the Freedom Party.

The lawyer asks Julian for advice on how he can help his client to prove it.

Basically, I told him, look,

it might be possible to do it.

I cannot say, but it's going to take a budget.

These kinds of things don't happen like on the fly.

This needs to be bland.

It needs to be paid for.

And to my big surprise, sometime later, again, he came back and asked how much money that would be.

And oh, I told him I think 30 or 40,000 euros for the start and see where we go from there.

And he came and put the money down on the table a few days later.

The Freedom Party is not a new force in Austrian politics, but it is radical, fiercely anti-immigration.

Its supporters are a hodgepodge, united in their opposition to the Austrian establishment.

Some are old-school anti-clerical liberals, some are German nationalists, some are Nazis, most are just fed up.

up.

It's not long before Julian finds himself on the top floor of one of Vienna's most exclusive hotels, the Grand Hotel Vienne.

I'm afraid this is going to be a bit of a recurrence in this tale, these kind of venues.

But then, that's the great irony of hotels.

Sleep is always the least interesting thing that happens in them.

Julian's in a private dining room called the Rotunda.

It's like out of the mafia movie, so it's a round room with a round table inside, and on the ceiling you have a fresco.

It It really looks like out of Scarface.

It's an intimate gathering.

I took on a role as some sort of a conciliere if you want, somebody who gives advice, translates.

He's made sure to set up a hidden video camera in case he gets anything incriminating that he can share with his lawyer friend.

The guest of honor is a prominent politician from the Freedom Party, Johan Goudenus.

He's young, he's handsome, tall, athletic, and a bit of a party boy.

That's his reputation, anyway.

Gudenis is officially the deputy mayor of Vienna, but he's also seen by many as one of the most influential figures in populist politics.

What Gudenis is most known for in political circles, though, is his affinity for all things Russian.

He studied in Moscow, he's a fluent speaker.

And at the Grand Hotel, he's making small talk, in Russian, with one of the other dinner guests, a woman who was introduced to him as the niece of a prominent Russian oligarch.

And so the story that we presented was: okay,

we have the niece here of this certain oligarch, and she has about 350 million euros that need to move.

We need a

way to wash, transfer, and clean this money, and invest it.

And for all that, we're looking for friends.

The thing is, the Russian oligarch's niece, she's not a Russian oligarch's niece.

She's Julian's friend.

To help her play the part, he's hired bodyguards.

She arrived in a Maybach, a top-of-the-range ultra-luxury Mercedes that costs more than the house.

The dinner was like 4,000 euros because it was like a private dinner room.

And then drinks were for sure running up to 10.15k that night because everybody was drinking heavily.

These expensive details though, they're not trivial.

They're what's going to convince Godenos that this woman is the real deal.

And it works.

So Mr.

Godenos within two hours was talking very openly about

certain corruptive

steps he was willing to take and certain things he was willing to offer and certain contacts he was willing to provide.

It's late and the evening draws to a close.

Julian is convinced it's been a success.

But then he discovers a problem.

I had never worked with video equipment before, and I had obviously fucked it up quite well because I had forgotten to put the SD cards to save the memory cards.

So there was no material, actually.

So the evening went very great, but we just didn't have any material.

He'd fallen into the trap completely, but actually

you couldn't prove any of that.

Yes.

But things don't end there.

In part because Julian likes a challenge and thinks that it might still be possible to pull this off.

But also, Godanus won't let it go either.

He keeps badgering Julian about this oligarch's niece.

Would she, for example, be interested in buying some of his land?

At a vastly inflated price, of course.

What else can he help her with in Austria?

And what might she be able to do for the Freedom Party?

Goodenus has one particularly striking idea.

He says to her,

If you got that much money and you're looking to invest, why don't you buy the Kronen newspaper for us?

The Kronenzeitung is Austria's biggest newspaper, a tabloid read daily by nearly a quarter of the population.

It would be a hugely influential platform for the Freedom Party.

And he even didn't hold back why he was interested in that, because he said to me, if you do that for us and you help us with the elections, we can do everything.

I told him, look, look, look, all good, but this kind of stuff, we need to sit with the boss.

Julian tells Gudenos that to make this deal happen, he needs to meet with the leader of the party.

And pretty soon, he gets a reply.

Invitation accepted.

And so, take two begins.

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When Julian begins to put his new plan together, he's only half expecting it will actually go anywhere.

He's pretty sure that now he's moved up the food chain with an attempt to get to the actual leader of the Freedom Party, someone at some point is going to do their research and rumble him.

What was driving you through all of this?

So at first, when I started, I thought, okay, this is not gonna go really nowhere much.

Then it was more like curiosity to a degree.

I was all the time just

going further to see when the point was when they would say, okay, look, all fine now, but show some ID.

Let's do a background check, meet with our security guy, something.

But it doesn't happen, and without resistance, Julian finds that the mad cat plan he's cooking up becomes a reality.

And so that's how he ends up in a high-stakes sting to entrap the boss, the man who party boy Johan Godenus answers to, the leader of the Freedom Party, Heinz Christian Strache.

Strache is a radical, but he's also hugely popular.

No Austrian politician has as many followers online.

These days they call themselves Team Haase, Heinz Christian.

So going after him, it's no small deal.

Godenus has, by this point, suggested to the oligarch's niece that she buys the country's biggest newspaper to help the party win upcoming elections in return for political favours.

Julian's plan is to draw Stracha into this notion too, and expose his willingness to be corrupted.

What surprises Julian is just how quickly Stracha says yes to the invitation.

It has Julian wondering, if he's got this far already, how far might others with much greater resources and fewer scruples have got?

Hostile foreign countries, for example.

So if I'm sitting here here now after a few weeks, where are state actors sitting?

And what does that mean for the country I was born in?

So, I cannot even explain it fully, but it was just like a feeling of that's just too much.

I think that's the best way to put it.

It's just too much.

I know politics is corrupt, I know everything, I know that, I know that.

I believe to know that, but this is too much.

It's no coincidence that this tale is going to loop back to Jan Marcelek.

Corruption isn't just the mood music in this whole series.

It's the air that these characters breathe.

It's July 2017 when Julian tries again.

He's on Ibiza and he's just got back from that shopping trip.

The champagne is on ice.

He and the Russian oligarch's niece are on the terrace of a rented villa waiting for their guests to arrive, psyching themselves up.

This villa, it's pretty luxurious by any normal standard, but it's on Airbnb, and for that reason, Julian is a little nervous.

Billionaires do not use Airbnb.

The cover story he's prepared is that his client wouldn't be seen dead inviting people like Stracha and Guadenus to her real home on the island, where her young family is.

The whole thing is taking place on Ibiza for a reason.

It's an open secret in Viennese political circles that every year, Straka and a bunch of acolytes head to the island to let loose.

Julian has brought in professional help for the technical side of things.

He's not going to mess up the recording a second time.

There will be memory cards.

The whole villa is rigged.

There's a camera hidden in a phone charging station on a sideboard in the living room, another in a fake light switch taped to the wall.

There are even cameras in the lid of a Starbucks coffee cup, and in a small clock positioned on the kitchen counter.

What What we know about what happened that day, it all comes from Julian and the hours of tape and video from the villa.

Stracha arrives with Godenus who has brought his wife Tejana.

She's Serbian and another fluent Russian speaker.

Introductions are made.

Julian explains his role as a fixer and introduces his supposed client, the niece.

We're just drinking some wine and testing each other, I guess Mr.

Stracha was asking, okay, what do you do, where is she from?

Dinner is served in the garden.

Julian has ordered in trays of high-end sushi.

He and the oligarch's niece begin to work in their talking points as the conversation flows.

They have a list of incriminating requests for Strache that they plan on floating with him in return for buying Austria's most influential paper.

The main things we had said, we want you to change the law so water, drinking water resources can be privatized.

We told them we want contracts for the upkeep of military installations.

We want airport contracts.

We want telecommunications.

So anything a state actor would have an interest in getting his fingers into.

It's turning into a long evening, and it's getting chilly outside.

So they move into the sitting room of the villa.

In the footage from the secret recording that day, you can see Stracha sprawled on the sofa, the oligarch's niece next to him.

Godenus is translating from German to Russian.

There are empty bottles on the table.

The sound is kind of rough, but if you listen carefully, you can hear the conversation rambling over Austrian politics, the crimes of the Freedom Party's enemies, and their plans to win influence in the media.

Godenus and Stracha, they're drinking quite a lot, which probably helps because at two points, things very nearly come off the rails.

The oligarch's niece is getting fed up.

This is not what she signed up for.

She's doing the whole thing as a favor for Julian, but it's taking a toll.

She's an actress, not an actual spy.

She hates these people, and her mask is beginning to slip.

She was really being impolite.

He says, okay, if you buy me this newspaper, I'm going to be the next Chancellor.

And she looks him dead in the eye and tells him, I also want to be a cosmonaut, but you're just an idiot.

And I mean...

were you?

Were you in the room?

Yeah, I was in the room.

What was going through your head?

So she was talking Russian to Mr.

Gudenos.

Mr.

Gudenos was translating.

So the point is, Mr.

Shrake obviously didn't understand, but Mr.

Gudenos understands perfectly well what she said.

He just doesn't translate it.

Gudenos' wife is also an unexpected complication.

At one point, she gazes directly into one of the hidden cameras, as if she's seen it.

And then she asks this question:

How are you not sure this is not a trap?

And Mr.

Schacher went into it.

He was like, yeah, this is all strange.

And then he came up with some strange reasons because the toenails of the oligarch's niece were supposedly not in the condition what he would expect from an oligarch's niece or whatever.

So in any case, he was like, yeah, that's strange.

And Mustafa actually lied to him.

So he actually told him, no, no, this is not a trap.

We've known each other for a long time.

Of course, Godenus hasn't known the niece very long at all.

They've barely spent more than an evening in each other's company.

But already, Godanus is so invested in this fiction.

He's excited by what this deal with the oligarch's niece could do for the Freedom Party.

And for him.

He's ventured his reputation as the party's point man for Russia on it.

And now he's got his boss involved.

As a result, he's the perfect unwitting ally in the deception.

Julian realizes, all the same, he needs to increase the pressure.

So he takes Straker aside and confronts him.

We came here because we understood you're serious about this.

Now we need to talk about this because it's clear we're not going to get contracts from you.

And I think you're smart enough to understand that we're not going to invest 150 million just for you to tell us, yeah, when that happens, we'll see how we can get to, because that's not how things work.

So we're going to need an agreement here.

The agreement needs to be clear-cut.

Stracha says he gets it, but he's still being evasive.

He says he wants to find a legal solution to gloss this relationship.

That's like me going to rob a bank and telling them, look,

give me all your money, but just so we both understand each other, this is not a robbery.

By now, the sitting room is looking less digestifs with a billionaire and more balaric lads on the lash.

People are switching between languages, and Julian is worried about whether they're actually going to get incriminating material at all.

He doesn't know, of course, just what has been caught by the different cameras around the villa.

It's only later, after reviewing hours of tape, that he hears the moment.

The bit he needs.

And it comes right as Stracha is leaving the villa.

And he turns around, he was already outside the door in the garden, he turns around and calls to Mr.

Godenos and tells him, go back and settle it now.

And Mr.

Godenos goes back and there is a she is alone with the oligarchs niece in the kitchen, and that's also on video.

And he says,

He's trying to whisper, but it's the camera was quite near, so you can hear.

And he says, Look, he's ready to do whatever you want, just he cannot say, Do you understand?

And she tells him,

I understand, but does he understand that even for me, this is a very risky move?

And he says, Yes, yes, we're willing to do everything, I promise you.

This final few seconds of footage is the match that will ignite a political bomb and end up putting me in front of the people who are the key to understanding Jan Marselek's other life.

Three months after the Abiza operation, something happens which really changes the whole nature of the material that Julian has on tape.

The Freedom Party does better than expected in the elections.

They get brought into government.

Heinz Christian Strachke, he becomes the vice-chancellor, the second most powerful man in Austria.

Julian has to be very careful who he talks to, and over the span of about a year and a half, he begins to crack.

This time,

feeling completely alone in the world, carrying a weight you don't, you cannot even really carry.

It's much too heavy for you, and not having nowhere to turn, not having no one to take the load off of you.

That's psychologically incredibly straining.

Where I was

really

locking myself in at home, drinking myself to sleep, hating myself for having touched that.

Secrets can have a hugely corrosive power.

For some people, the radioactivity is what they enjoy most, but for others, it can be unbearable.

Julian tries to get on with his life, but he can't, knowing what he knows.

He begins to talk to two newspapers, very tentatively, about making the video public.

He knows that in doing so, he will probably get outed.

There are many people in Austrian politics and the media who still believe Julian embarked on this project for commercial gain, but Julian says that's not the case.

You never tried to sell the video.

I never tried to sell the video.

Jan Marcelek wasn't directly involved in the Abitha scandal, but he's all around the edges of it.

Julian remembers one uncomfortable coincidence after that night in Ibiza, but before the video became public.

An unexpected encounter on a plane.

I was flying out of Moscow and all of a sudden Mr.

Godenos pops up and drops in a seat beside me.

Like, hey, what are you doing here?

And I was like, oh, fuck.

Obviously, it was not what I expected or wanted at that time.

Since he'd got the evidence he needed, Julian had been trying to distance himself from Stracha and Godenos, so this was the last thing he wanted.

But Godenos wanted to talk about someone he'd just met and had been really impressed by.

Ah yeah, there's a guy, Janu, you need to meet him soon.

He's Austrian, also, he's a great guy, you need to meet Janu.

Eventually, Julian decides to go public.

He hands over four plus hours of raw footage to the press.

And then, in May 2019, it happens.

The Abitha video lands, and the effect is almost instantaneous.

Strache and Goudenus resign.

The whole Austrian government collapses.

Everything is in flux, and this is the moment when I arrived in Vienna.

I did reach out to Heinz Christian Strache about all this.

He told me that the Abitha video was a set-up.

In his words, an illegally staged trap.

In fact, he believes there was another actor behind Julian and his lawyer friend, an intelligence service.

He says the video was edited to do maximum damage to him, pointing out that only five minutes or so of tape was initially released.

The rest of the tape, he says, shows him rejecting offers of corruption.

He also wonders why the video was released nearly two years after it was made.

Of the 17 official investigations and lawsuits against him, 14 have now been dropped or overturned on appeal.

As it happens, Strucker hasn't left politics.

He's running to be mayor of Vienna as leader of his new political party, Tim Harse.

We reached out to Godenus too.

He didn't respond.

He has always denied wrongdoing and refuted allegations of corruption in connection with the Abitha scandal.

The day after Julian's video aired, I took a call from a friendly diplomat.

He had seen my coverage of the Abitha scandal, and he offhandedly told me, if you're interested in real Russian influence in Austrian politics, never mind fake oligarchs' nieces, then you need to dig into the Austrian-Russian Friendship Society.

I grin broadly as I hear this because that has got to be the worst cover name for a front organisation I have ever heard.

He says all the best secrets in Austria are in plain sight.

It turns out that there's even a website for the Friendship Society, the EFG, which stands for Take a Deep Breath, Everyone, is De Reichisch Hosischer Freundschaft Gesellschaft.

It's pretty clear that lots of material has already been taken down, but not everything.

There's still a link to a flyer, an invitation, a summit featuring Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, its ambassador to Vienna, and a host of security officials from Moscow.

The venue?

The Austrian Ministry of Defence.

For the second time in the day, I find myself grinning, maybe even actually laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of this.

Because the thing is, Russia, even at this stage, is something of a pariah in Europe.

In February 2014, it invaded its neighbour, seizing Crimea.

It's meddled in the US presidential election.

It's been exposed for the mass doping of its athletes at the Olympics.

It's systematically hacking, and in some cases damaging, commercial computer networks.

It's just killed an innocent woman in Britain with a highly dangerous nerve agent in a botched assassination attempt.

Even if the Austrian government hadn't just collapsed, this friendly meeting would look odd.

First thing the next day, I call the Ministry of Defence to ask about this summit.

And I'm surprised when I actually get an answer.

It's not happening at the Ministry anymore, I get told.

It's going to be held privately.

And then, Soto Voce,

I'm not sure I'm supposed to say where.

A pause.

Have you got a pen?

It's happening at the Grand Hotel, the very same hotel in downtown Vienna where Julian Hesenthaler first tried and failed to get Johan Goudenos on tape, before Ibiza.

That afternoon, I decide to try and gate crash this summit.

The Grand Hotel has a busy taxi rank outside, which gives the opportunity to walk past relatively inconspicuously.

I try to get a sense of what's going on inside and whether there are any irritating security arrangements in place.

It seems there are not.

I stride in as confidently as I can.

Reception is quiet.

There's no obvious sign that anything is happening here today.

I ask a porter.

He tells me to look upstairs, in the conference suite.

There's a thrum of people towards the end of the corridor, so I discreetly join them.

And I'm surprised when I get ushered into this room and hurried into a seat.

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Ambassador are about to arrive and the organisers want everyone sat down.

What followed wasn't hugely exciting.

There were some odd speeches, full of platitudes and familiar Russian talking points about their status as a great power and so on.

At this stage, I don't really know what I'm here looking for or expecting.

I don't recognise the faces of the various civil servants who have turned up.

So I decide I'll creep out at the next opportunity.

I've seen this event taking place, I've seen what's being said, said, and to be honest, for now, that seems like enough.

I'm also on a bit of an adrenaline high, mainly because I'm pretty surprised I haven't yet been rumbled.

But then, as I leave, something else catches my eye.

In the corridor, now empty, is a registration desk, and on this registration desk, a sheet of paper.

A register of attendees.

and invitees.

Without stopping to think, I grab it, roll it up and stick it in the inside pocket of my jacket.

I don't properly look at it until I'm back at my hotel, sat in front of my laptop.

I know this document could be important, because I think my diplomat friend was hinting earlier that the Friendship Society is a cover for Russian influence and intelligence operations.

So I look through the list for leads.

None of the names jump out at me until I notice something else.

One sponsor has a very familiar name:

Wirecard.

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I told myself that this sudden appearance of Wirecard, a huge German company my colleagues were investigating for fraud, was probably a coincidence.

But it kept niggling at me.

Paul Murphy, my editor at the FT, had told me that Marcellek, Wirecard's chief operating officer, was somehow involved in Austrian politics behind the scenes, an impression he'd got from their lunches together in London and Munich.

After only a few weeks in Austria, I felt I had found some tiny bits of a puzzle.

I knew they must join together to maybe tell us what Marcellek was up to.

I just couldn't see how.

I needed to find someone who could help.

That someone turned out to be Stephanie Crisper, Steffi.

I never wanted to get into politics.

I had no intention to do so.

Steffi is an MP for Austria's young reformist party, the NEOS.

She's now one of my most valuable contacts in Austria.

Steffi remembers hearing about Julian's Abitha video.

As for most of Austria's liberal politicians, it was an electric moment.

I was totally

astonished.

What was shocking is the brutality in which

Strache voiced his intentions to act in a corrupt way.

After the Abitha scandal broke, the Austrian parliament voted to create a special investigatory committee with huge powers, basically the ability to act like a mini court.

It was called the Abitha Committee.

Almost all of its work was secret, but it was investigating exactly what I was interested in.

Thanks to Julian and the Abitha scandal, it was going to probe Russian influence in Austrian politics, among other things, the Friendship Society.

So surely, I thought, it would shed further light on Marcellek's role there.

Steffi, she was a member of this committee, the most outspoken, and that's why I knew I had to try and get to know her.

The first time I met with Steffi in person was not long after the Abiza scandal broke.

We were in her office, a huge grand room, like all these other Viennese offices, but the floor space was filled with desks and files.

We were talking about corruption in Austrian politics, but at the end of the conversation, I asked if she had ever heard of anyone called Jan Marcelek.

Steffi and I have slightly different memories of how that conversation went.

And then at the end of the meeting, I asked, oh, and do you know anything about this guy, Jan Marsalek?

But that was...

And I said no.

No, you didn't.

You said maybe.

Yeah, but I didn't say anything.

You looked in a funny way.

Oh, yeah, my

face.

Yeah.

And said,

um,

I'll uh

talk about that.

I will ask someone exactly.

Steffi is right, she didn't say anything, but what was totally clear to me was that, yes, she did know this name, and for whatever reason, she couldn't talk about it.

Next time I was in Vienna, Steffi got in touch.

She said she'd like to tell me something.

She suggested a venue.

It's a boat on the Danube.

Well, almost, it's a moored floating pavilion really, and it's on the Danube Canal.

But anyway, it was mid-afternoon and it was cold.

And when I get there, Steffi suggests we sit outside.

We're the only ones.

Steffi says that, yes, she has heard of Jan Marcelek.

Specifically, she's heard about him through a friend.

She can't really tell me much more.

But this friend, she says, believes Marcelek is very dangerous.

And I'm asked not to talk to anybody because he, like others, just tell me things because they're afraid.

So I start to do nothing.

I mean, yes, I Google myself, Marcellek, etc.

But I don't ask journalists like you what they think about this guy.

I really do nothing.

What he said to you, he was worried about his personal safety.

Yes, exactly.

I tell her what I know.

That Warcard is a huge fraud, that Marcellek is at the center of it, and that we at the FT know he uses aggressive surveillance and private investigators to go after people.

Steffi says she'll go back to her source and relay that we're looking into Marcelek, but she doesn't tell me much more.

The impression I get is that whoever this person is, he's not exactly the anxious type, and so whatever he's concerned about is genuine.

Steffi later asked this man if he'd be willing to meet me.

And he was.

I thought, I hope that he will talk to you and you will be able to investigate on it and

things come up and there are consequences.

And perhaps

misdeeds and misbehaviour is stopped.

Several weeks go by and Steffi gets in touch again.

It's late December and I'm back in Vienna for a quick visit to tie up some loose ends before heading back to Zurich.

Vienna is feeling particularly festive, and in the city parks, foresters have come down from the hills with huge truckloads of fir trees to sell to the Viennese.

Steffi tells me this source of hers is in town.

Now.

That's rare, she says.

Normally, he's not even in Europe.

But time is limited.

He can meet in the evening.

I curse because my flight home is at seven.

But I decide I can catch the night train back instead.

So I go back to Steffi, and the meeting is on.

We agree a venue, Café Pruckel.

Pruckel is one of the great Viennese coffee houses.

Its interior is unexpected.

It's a beautiful, entirely original 1950s scheme.

Polished wood, light green upholstery, worn and a bit tatty, and some soft dusty pink on the walls.

This time in the evening is bright and busy.

There's a pianist, waiters hurry back and forth, and there's a typical Viennese crowd, young Christmas revelers, stately dharma with tissans and furs, and academic looking men, faces buried in huge newspapers.

That evening I grab a discreet table in the corner of the room with a view to the door and my back to the wall.

I don't know who I'm looking for, and in keeping with the generally cinematic feel of it all, I turn up to Prukel with a copy of the FT tucked in under my arm.

So much, it turned out, hinged on this moment, and what it would deliver.

Treasure.

A breakthrough lead.

As far as I was aware, I only had one shot with this source, and we only had 15 minutes.

I had to find out what he knew.

But I also needed to get a sense of whether he was credible.

And, most important of all, I had to try to convey to him that I was credible too.

I needed him to trust me enough that I could keep a connection with him.

And then I spot a man coming through the door of the cafe, looking around.

He's in his mid-50s.

He's solidly built, ever so slightly imposing, with a broad, open face and thick stubble.

He walks towards me.

spotting the copy of the paper in front of me.

I'm Killian, he says.

We don't have much time, and in my haste, all I've brought with me to scribble on is the tiny four-sheet pad for telephone messages from my hotel room.

Can you tell me who you are, I ask.

Can you tell me what you know about Jan Marcelek?

He's met Jan Marcelek a handful of times.

He's been to his home, he's had dinner with him, he was employed by him, and he's convinced that Marcelek is working closely with Russian intelligence.

How does Killian know that?

Because Jan basically did everything but tell him so.

Next time on hot money.

And then very fast actually he started then talking about his experience in Syria facilitated by the boys just after the recapture of the city of Panyra from ISIS.

When he said with the boys, what did you say?

He basically said with the Russians.

Hot Money is a production of the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries.

It was written and reported by me, Sam Jones.

The senior producer and co-writer is Peggy Sutton.

Our producer is Izzy Carter.

Our researcher is Maureen Saint.

Our show is edited by Karen Shikurji.

Fact-checking by Kira Levine.

Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorski and Marcelo d'Oliveira with additional sound design by Izzy Carter.

Original music from Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphonet.

Our show art is by Sean Carney.

Our executive producers are Cheryl Brumley, Amy Gaines-McQuaid and Matthew Garrahan.

Additional editing by Paul Murphy.

Special thanks to Rula Kalaf, Dan McCrum, Laura Clark, Alistair Mackey, Manuele Saragossa, Nigel Hansen, Vicki Merrick, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Jake Flanagan, Jacob Goldstein, Sarah Nix, and Greta Cohn.

I'm Sam Jones.

Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to listen to Hot Money Agent of Chaos ad-free.

As a Pushkin Plus subscriber, you'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors.

Find Pushkin Plus on the Hot Money Show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

Drew and Sue and Eminem's Minis.

And baking the surprise birthday cake for Lou.

And Sue forgetting that her oven doesn't really work.

And Drew remembering that they don't have flour.

And Lou getting home early from work, which he never does.

And Drew and Sue using the rest of the tubes of Eminem's Minis as party poppers instead.

I think this is one of those moments where people say, it's the thought that counts.

MMs, it's more fun together.

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