Introducing Hot Money Season 3: Agent of Chaos

Jan Marcelek was a model of modern German corporate success.

It seemed so damn simple for him.

Young, wealthy, charismatic.

Did it occur to you that he'd charmed you in any way?

Yes, it did.

But he was a charming man.

It turned out he was also a fraudster.

Where does the money come from?

That was something that I always was questioning myself.

Someone living another life.

His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road.

I'm Sam Jones and I'm the European security correspondent for the Financial Times.

In 2020, my colleagues at the FT exposed German financial payments giant Warcard as a huge corporate con.

But it was also the start of a strange and more elusive tale.

One cannot work with Maasadek.

He is too close to the Russians.

It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story, because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

For the last year, I've been pulling together threads from the wreckage Jan Marselek left behind.

He disappeared just hours before Warkard's final moments and took plundered millions with him.

I've met people who were drawn into his world.

I envied Jan so much.

Only for their lives to be turned upside down.

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

I don't know if they followed me to my home.

Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong

that I think this can't be a coincidence.

I've traced Marcelec's path from glamorous parties along the Coeur d'Azur with his mysterious Russian lover to the front lines of the war on terror, snapping selfies with Russian mercenaries in Syria and Libya.

A life of conspiracies aimed at furthering the power of the far right.

He definitely has a view that he's operating with complete freedom to do whatever he likes.

I've tried to understand why Marcelek chose this path.

I think the biggest tragedy of Jan Marselek is

that he didn't need to be

what he turned out to be.

What it's all for.

I would say that we are actually at the doorstep of a new ideological war and people are choosing their sides in this struggle.

And who he really is.

I often ask myself now, did I

know the true Jan at all?

This is a story about the underside of the law-abiding world that most of us imagine we live in.

A space carved out by crime and corruption.

A world some people find irresistible.

It all began with an attempt to catch a white-collar fraudster, but it ended up exposing something more sinister.

Espionage.

From the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries, Hot Money, Season 3, Agent of Chaos.

Coming June 10th.

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