Truth serum | The Gas Man Ep 5

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Speaker 23 Tortoise

Speaker 24 Before we start, I just need to tell you that this episode includes an incident of anti-Semitism. It also includes a description of torture.

Speaker 21 Only an idiot wouldn't know. why Iran wanted so many barrels, 55 gallon drums of thiodiglycol.

Speaker 23 Special Agent Dennis Bass worked for the Baltimore Customs Office for 25 years. He put a lot of criminals behind bars during that time, a lot of big-time drug dealers and traffickers.

Speaker 23 And I think it's fair to say he doesn't have much time for people who break the law.

Speaker 23 He prided himself on his ability to follow through.

Speaker 23 But ultimately, he just wanted the job done. So he was perfectly happy to help law enforcement officials elsewhere to close a case.

Speaker 21 Look what happened with Franz von Andrat.

Speaker 23 We were never able to get him here to the US, but he was Franz van Anrat, the guy who supplied Saddam Hussein with chemicals used to make mustard gas.

Speaker 23 He hid from Dennis Bass in Baghdad for more than a decade.

Speaker 23 When he returned home to the Netherlands, the US authorities didn't need to go after him because Dutch prosecutors charged him with complicity in war crimes.

Speaker 21 And they were so incensed by what he did, they went above and beyond.

Speaker 21 Walicek fled, he went back to Germany and they didn't do a thing to him. Nothing.

Speaker 23 Denis Bass is disappointed that the Germans didn't take the same approach towards Peter Walicek, who'd pleaded guilty but fled before he could be sentenced.

Speaker 23 But the thing is, the two cases aren't exactly equivalent. Franz van Anrat's chemicals had helped create mustard gas, which was shown to have killed people.

Speaker 23 Peter Walaszczek's chemicals may well have been used by the Iranians, but there's no definitive evidence to prove it.

Speaker 21 It makes no difference.

Speaker 21 The crimes that both of them committed, as far as we were concerned in the United States, were were violations of the export administration regulations, making numerous false statements on U.S.

Speaker 21 documents, money laundering. It doesn't have to be that mustard gas was ever made or used.

Speaker 23 What he wants to know is why didn't Germany prosecute Peter Walaschek for customs violations?

Speaker 23 On the face of it, there's a simple answer.

Speaker 23 I've been looking into old news coverage of the Walaschek case from the late 80s, after he escaped back to Germany.

Speaker 23 According to the New York Times, a spokesman for the German embassy said he couldn't be charged under German law because the transactions had taken place outside the country.

Speaker 23 I've been back and forth with legal experts on this point. It's complicated to dig into after so long, but it looks like it wasn't a crime the Germans could prosecute, even if they'd wanted to.

Speaker 23 And there's something else too.

Speaker 23 That same New York Times article claimed that the case illustrated the weaknesses of German export laws.

Speaker 23 It warned about the role other Western companies were playing as facilitators or enablers in the creation of chemical warfare programs all around the world.

Speaker 23 And that rang a bell.

Speaker 21 When I worked in export controls, the go-betweens, the people like Peter Walicek, the people that the Iran's and Iraq's and Libya's, the embargoed countries, that they would find to act as go-betweens on their behalf and make these illegal exports happen were German nationals.

Speaker 21 And, you know, the reason clearly was because Germany doesn't do anything to their citizens when they do things like this.

Speaker 23 Is it possible that the German government was just turning a blind eye to what was going on. And what's that meant for Peter Valisek's links to Iran since then?

Speaker 23 I'm Chloe Hajimathayu. From Tortoise, this is The Gasman.

Speaker 23 Episode 5: Truth Serum.

Speaker 26 All right, it's recording.

Speaker 23 Gavi Mehrone is a lawyer based in Chicago. He's speaking to us from his large, noisy office, all glass panels and piles of paperwork, with the city traffic blaring outside the window.

Speaker 26 We have in-house our own research facility made up of ex-intelligence officers, analysts from MI5,

Speaker 26 from United States intel, from Israeli intelligence.

Speaker 23 Over the last quarter of a century, his firm has won cases against banks, oil companies and state sponsors of terrorism.

Speaker 23 And they've collected more than one and a half billion dollars in compensation for their clients.

Speaker 23 Gavi Marone's latest case just concluded in a civil court in Iraq where he's been representing some of the victims of the 1988 Halabja chemical attack.

Speaker 23 But the reason I'm interested in all this is because it's not the regime of Saddam Hussein who's in the dock. The defendants in Gavi Marone's case include West German companies.

Speaker 23 And it's a case that's helped me understand the country that Peter Valiszek escaped to in 1988.

Speaker 23 Gavi Marone and his team allege that Iraqi officials hired German companies in the 80s to build chemical weapons factories under the guise of creating pesticide plants.

Speaker 26 And one of their top guys in intelligence, he went to Germany and he contracted with what became three West German companies to build the entire chemical weapons plants.

Speaker 27 Prusag was the key link and Prusag today, it changed its name.

Speaker 26 They today are called TUI and they're the largest tourism organization in Europe.

Speaker 23 Are you saying that TUI, the travel company, knowingly built a chemical factory in Iraq for Saddam to manufacture chemical weapons?

Speaker 26 Much more than that, I'm saying. TUI was the chief co-conspirator with the Saddam regime to clandestinely build it.

Speaker 23 Yep, that TUI.

Speaker 23 Before it changed its name, TUI was a big player in mining and chemicals. I'd heard a little bit about this case before speaking to Gavi Mehrone,

Speaker 23 but still,

Speaker 23 it seems incredible that a company I associate with sunshine and family holidays could be implicated in something so dark.

Speaker 23 Tui sent us a statement denying the allegations made in the lawsuit.

Speaker 23 The company claims a group of employees was responsible for these clandestine deals with Iraq without the main company's knowledge and that they were subsequently let go.

Speaker 23 Previous attempts to prosecute the company have been unsuccessful and a verdict in Gavi Meirone's case is expected later this summer.

Speaker 23 But it's not just him who's making these types of claims about West German companies.

Speaker 23 In 2012, Claudia Rot, a German politician who was then co-chair of the Green Party and is now Minister of Culture, publicly apologised for what she described as German participation in the Kurdish genocide.

Speaker 23 And here's where I'm really going with all this.

Speaker 23 Lots of companies around the world sold all sorts of weapons, technologies and chemicals to Saddam Hussein in the 80s. Yes, in Germany, but also in the Netherlands, France and even here in Britain.

Speaker 23 In fact, a British company built a factory in Iraq which was used by Saddam Hussein to manufacture chemical weapons.

Speaker 23 Years later, that same factory was cited as a reason for Britain to go to war against Iraq.

Speaker 23 The thing is, Gavi Mehron's lawsuit argues that West German companies were selling far more than anyone else, and that without their help, it's likely Saddam Hussein would never have had the capability to carry out atrocities like the one in Halabja.

Speaker 23 This was the context in which Peter Walaschek was developing his own international business interests.

Speaker 23 When Peter Valisek escaped from the US in the late 80s, it was big news.

Speaker 20 And then I was on the first page of famous

Speaker 23 Washington Post, New York Times.

Speaker 20 New York Times. First pitch.
Havos there.

Speaker 23 Understanding the Germany he escaped to has helped me make more sense of things. Why his arrest by Dennis Bass would have been unlikely to leave a dent on his entrepreneurial spirit.
Why would it?

Speaker 23 Other than a bit of media attention, there didn't seem to be any real consequences for anyone engaged in this type of business. But what about Peter Valaschek now in 2024?

Speaker 23 Well, the only real difference seems to be that his client list has expanded.

Speaker 20 We have two companies

Speaker 20 making export of medicine and with

Speaker 20 countries

Speaker 20 what the Americans say

Speaker 20 they are the bad countries. North Korea.
China, Iran.

Speaker 23 Sitting in his dusty office in Siegberg, Germany, surrounded by busts of dead Soviet heroes, he reels off the list of sanctioned countries he's been trading with as if he's trying to impress me.

Speaker 23 He has a few companies registered under his name, and he tells me they mostly trade pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and equipment.

Speaker 23 Maybe it's the language barrier, but I find it really hard to pin him down on the details. It's unclear what his involvement is now that he's in his early 80s.

Speaker 23 Sometimes he tells me his wife's taken over everything, other times that he still goes on business trips.

Speaker 23 But he's happy to show off the fact that he's travelled extensively to these countries since the 1980s. At the invitation of the governments themselves, no less.

Speaker 23 And North Korea, how was that?

Speaker 20 This is also invited from government. I had a car with a car and driver, and we were going to the border to South Korea.
It was very interesting.

Speaker 23 Not many people get to see that. It's unusual.

Speaker 20 I know, I know. But we have

Speaker 20 given them

Speaker 20 medicine and such things.

Speaker 23 Tehran, did you go to Tehran?

Speaker 20 I go there

Speaker 20 as a friend.

Speaker 20 One

Speaker 20 week, two weeks.

Speaker 20 I have there many friends. They were all from the heart.

Speaker 20 like Hamas or so.

Speaker 23 Like Hamas. Yeah.

Speaker 23 We're speaking just weeks after the Hamas terror attack on Israel that happened in October 2023.

Speaker 23 For decades, Iran has been one of the strongest supporters of Hamas.

Speaker 20 I said it was right what they were doing.

Speaker 20 I don't like Jewish.

Speaker 23 Why not?

Speaker 20 Because they are Jewish. They make

Speaker 20 the whole world,

Speaker 20 the whole centuries, only trouble.

Speaker 23 It's really shocking to hear this kind of brazen anti-Semitism. But actually, this is pretty typical of my conversations with Peter Valischek.

Speaker 23 He uses racist and sexist language, and I try not to react because I suspect it's deliberate and intended to shock, and also, maybe, an attempt by by him to deflect and avoid answering the real question.

Speaker 23 I realise that even after all this time, I still don't really understand him. I can't get a grip on what's real and what's a performance.

Speaker 23 What I really want to know is why he's chosen to trade specifically with countries that have a reputation for being so repressive.

Speaker 23 Iran, Russia and North Korea, all considered to be state sponsors of terrorism and all of them sanctioned. Peter Valisek tells me that even these countries need painkillers.

Speaker 23 Only I'm not exactly convinced that's all he's been selling them.

Speaker 23 If I want to get anywhere I'm going to have to find someone who can tell me more about what Peter Valisek's really been up to since the late 80s and whether he's still breaking the law to export illicit goods to rogue states.

Speaker 28 he was interesting and he was very busy just

Speaker 28 trying to get contacts and to earn money aha so he was focused on business yes

Speaker 23 this is carl he was one of peter valiszczek's business associates in the late 90s and early 2000s he's agreed to speak to me on the condition that he remains anonymous carl as we're calling him was involved in selling pharmaceuticals and medical equipment with Peter Walisczek for a couple of decades.

Speaker 28 It was in the 1990s.

Speaker 23 We're chatting over the phone. He's at home in Germany with his daughter there in the background to help if he gets stuck with his English.

Speaker 28 We had a a company dealing with chemicals for schools and university for research,

Speaker 28 trading with relief organizations like the Red Cross or Care,

Speaker 28 and we packed things for deliveries to countries like Bosnia, Herzegovina,

Speaker 28 Africa, and so on.

Speaker 23 Oh, wow. So, he was sending aid.
You were helping him send aid to war zones.

Speaker 28 Not only a war, but also natural catastrophes and things like that.

Speaker 23 I have to admit, this takes me totally by surprise. It seems there was good money to be made from disaster relief at the time.

Speaker 23 But still, it doesn't fit with the image I have in my mind of Peter Valisek. So I asked Carl about the Peter Valiszczek he knew, what he was like as a business partner and a person.

Speaker 28 He was a fan of Stalin, you know, the former Russian leader.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 28 You see that he

Speaker 28 has been a communist,

Speaker 28 that's a capitalist communist. So

Speaker 28 it's very difficult to understand what's going on in his mind.

Speaker 23 It's good to know that I'm not the only one who finds Peter Valisek difficult to read. And it looks like any animosity he might have had for America before his arrest.

Speaker 20 I hate the US. A good American is a dead American.

Speaker 23 becomes all-encompassing afterwards, driving him closer to the countries he still does business with. Countries he gleefully calls the axis evil he bought

Speaker 28 no cars that were produced in the u.s

Speaker 28 he didn't like that at all so that was the reason i think he made then business with countries like north korea iran cuba which were also against the United States.

Speaker 23 It's helpful to hear this. I realize that until Carl confirmed who Peter Valisek was doing business with, I was slightly suspicious he was making it all up about North Korea and Cuba.

Speaker 23 Though I was less sceptical about his old friends. Do you know what business he was doing with Iran? In the time we worked together, I saw several of these shipments.

Speaker 23 This has been only laboratory equipment and medical devices.

Speaker 23 So it was equipment, not drugs or chemicals.

Speaker 28 Yes, also chemicals, but not something like the thing in the 80s with the TOD glycol.

Speaker 28 Of course, also with medical equipment, lab equipment and chemicals, you have always a problem with dual-use products.

Speaker 23 Dual use is anything that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Speaker 23 Carl says he never saw Peter Walasczek selling anything illegal, but he does remember times when he ran foul of German customs over dual use exports in the 90s and early 2000s.

Speaker 23 He doesn't think any of it was deliberate, and he tells me these types of mistakes are pretty easy to make. To me, it doesn't sound like Peter Valisek learnt much from his time in prison in Baltimore.

Speaker 28 But of course, officials from the custom and things, they had a look on him, what he's doing. They checked everything very close.

Speaker 23 I have no way of knowing Peter Valiszczek's intentions. I've tried to ask him about these things, but he just dodges the question or tells me I should read the Bible, not the papers.

Speaker 23 And I'm not sure that customs would agree with Carl's take, that it's not such a big deal to make mistakes with dual-use exports. But here's what I think is important about all this:

Speaker 23 Carl is saying that Peter Walisczyk was known to customs, and a source in the customs office has confirmed they were keeping an eye on him.

Speaker 23 That means, no matter what Dennis Bass might think, German law enforcement has been on to Peter Walisczek.

Speaker 25 My name is Martin Hahn. I am a German freelance correspondent and reporter and I work mainly for German public radio.
So I've worked on chemical weapons and chemical weapons regulations.

Speaker 23 And we met at chemical weapons.

Speaker 25 We did meet in The Hague at the German embassy where you were on a panel where they discussed the chemical weapons and chemical weapons regulations.

Speaker 23 When we first met, Martin Hahn told me to give him a ring if I ever needed any help with an investigation I was working on. A very risky thing to offer.

Speaker 23 Because a few years down the line, and I've roped him into helping us with the parts of this investigation that require a German speaker.

Speaker 23 Investigating what kinds of things Peter Walisczek's been trading and whether the customs officers ever charged him with anything.

Speaker 23 And you've been helping us loads.

Speaker 25 I've tried.

Speaker 20 You've tried.

Speaker 23 With the limitations that you've got. Because it's not that simple in Germany.

Speaker 23 The country has these super strict privacy laws that significantly impact the information authorities will give out about things like investigations or criminal records.

Speaker 25 We have two cases in the German history, the Third Reich under Nazi Germany and the Stasi Secret Service.

Speaker 25 So I think these two things basically are the reason that data protection today is so strong and is seen as a safeguard against these intrusive inhumane surveillance measures by the state.

Speaker 23 It means that Martin Hahn hasn't been able to get any answers about Peter Valiscick's possible criminal history, whether he was charged in any customs cases, as Carl mentioned.

Speaker 23 I also find a news article that suggests he was investigated for fraud and forgery, but we can't stand that up either.

Speaker 25 So wherever I went, really, the answer was

Speaker 25 we don't know, and even if we knew, we wouldn't be able to tell you.

Speaker 23 The guy Martin Hahn talks to in the customs press office is able to comment more broadly. He admits they're limited in what they can do.

Speaker 25 So, they take random samples and check that, but there's no guarantee that every single shipment that is mislabeled will be

Speaker 25 flagged.

Speaker 23 So, it feels like there isn't anything substantial that we're going to get from official channels.

Speaker 23 But I do remember something that Peter Walischek mentioned when we were in his strange office in Siegberg.

Speaker 23 He had all those rows of bookshelves filled with taxidermy, all the weird, dusty, stuffed birds.

Speaker 23 And as he was telling me about them, I realize now that he actually admitted to pulling a fast one on German customs.

Speaker 20 This is from Island. Not allowed to bring it in anymore.
In casem, ouj.

Speaker 23 Okay, but when you brought it, it was okay.

Speaker 20 They didn't see it.

Speaker 20 Sometimes

Speaker 20 custom is not looking on their part, and sometimes it was look. But it's a long time ago, five years, ten years.

Speaker 23 To be fair, it was just a stuffed puffin. I don't have any evidence he tried to sell anything illegal to any of the rogue states he deals with.

Speaker 23 Until I discover a new case, this time from 2012, when Peter Valaschek was caught sending another potentially deadly substance to Iran.

Speaker 1 Hey friends, it's Nikayla from the podcast Side Hustle Pro.

Speaker 4 I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without without screens, and the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver.

Speaker 5 My kids are obsessed.

Speaker 6 Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen.

Speaker 8 Hours of stories, music, podcasts, and more, and no screens or ads.

Speaker 10 With hundreds of options for ages 0 to 12, it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again and again.

Speaker 13 Check it out at yotoplay.com, y-o-t-o-p-l-a-y.com.

Speaker 15 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now, Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

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Speaker 30 I heard from the main custom office in Aachen that they were investigating in

Speaker 30 Wholesale that they violated the European anti-torture regulation.

Speaker 30 Okay, my name is Markus Helwig. I'm a reporter for the newspaper in Germany called Bildam Santag.
It's a weekly newspaper in Germany.

Speaker 23 Markus Helwig first came across Peter Walisczek in 2012.

Speaker 23 But to understand the events that led him to the gas man, we have to scroll back about a year and a half before that.

Speaker 23 In 2010, Markus Helwig was in Tehran for a pre-arranged interview with a source when the door slammed open and a group of Iranian state security officers piled into the room.

Speaker 30 They were plain clothes and

Speaker 30 they just told me I should stop talking and

Speaker 30 give away my cell phone. And that was like, okay,

Speaker 30 what will happen next? I don't know.

Speaker 23 Being arrested in Iran is no joke. There's no guarantee you'll get access to a lawyer and certainly no guarantee of a fair trial.

Speaker 30 They accused me of being a spy and threatening their security. And after that, I was a terrorist.
Then

Speaker 30 the situation become worse. So they took me in this secret prison and that was a kind of torture prison.
They tortured people there.

Speaker 23 Iran's use use of torture against people in detention has been really well documented by human rights groups.

Speaker 30 I was blindfolded the whole time, and there were a lot of, I think, soldiers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. I guess I couldn't see them, but I hear them.

Speaker 30 And then the staff from the prison, they started to work at eight, sometimes nine o'clock, and then

Speaker 30 you can hear, or I heard the people crying and screaming.

Speaker 23 Marcus Helwig was tortured too. Electric wires were attached to his head and searing bolts shot through his jaw and skull.

Speaker 23 It's been years, but he still can't bring himself to talk about it. Instead, he describes the tiny space he was kept in.

Speaker 30 I was in a very, very small cell, so it was not possible to just stretch your arms and legs. And the light was on the whole night, 24-7.

Speaker 30 And

Speaker 30 sometimes they hit me, sometimes it was quite brutal.

Speaker 23 After five months, the newspaper he works for pays a $50,000 fine and the foreign minister of Germany flies to Tehran to bring Markus Helwig back home.

Speaker 23 But the reason I'm telling you this is because a year later, in 2012, when he's recovered and back working again, he gets a tip from one of his contacts at the customs office.

Speaker 23 It's about an illegal shipment they've managed to stop, and they think Marcus Helwig might be interested because it was on its way to Iran.

Speaker 23 You guessed it, Peter Valischek.

Speaker 23 Only this time, he's sending a pharmaceutical, 5,000 ampoules of it.

Speaker 30 He wanted to export

Speaker 30 it's a drug, it's called Q-Pentile.

Speaker 23 Sodium thiopental has legitimate uses as a pre-operative anesthetic, but under EU anti-torture legislation, its export's been restricted for countries that still carry out the death penalty, including Iran, but also the USA, because it can be used as a form of lethal injection.

Speaker 23 It's sometimes called truth serum. That's because it can be used to break down people's defenses and make it more likely that they'll talk.

Speaker 23 For Marcus Helwig, it's a hell of a realization that a German man was involved in the sale of a pharmaceutical that could be used as a torture aid.

Speaker 28 Knowing that they kill their own people, knowing that they're torturing their own people.

Speaker 30 It was shocking.

Speaker 23 Activists in Iran suspect these kinds of chemicals may have been used to induce public confessions from prisoners.

Speaker 23 So we asked Martin Hahn, the German journalist who's been helping us, to look into what happened to Peter Valisek as a consequence of the truth serum case.

Speaker 25 Customs then confiscated that shipment and destroyed it. I tried to reach out to the customs agency that was responsible back then, and they said the files have been destroyed.

Speaker 23 So we can't even find out whether he received a penalty of some kind for his infraction?

Speaker 25 All that falls under data privacy laws and data protection. I reached out to the German federal police, the BKR, and even they said

Speaker 25 they couldn't help me.

Speaker 23 If he was found guilty, it seems the worst he would have got was a fine. Peter Walasczek admits he tried to send the drugs, but again, he says he didn't know it was illegal.

Speaker 23 When we spoke, he denied he was prosecuted and dismissed the case as nothing big.

Speaker 23 Once again, nothing seems to touch Peter Valaschek.

Speaker 23 Still, German customs had done their job. They discovered illegal goods heading for a sanctioned country and stopped them.
But here's the thing.

Speaker 23 There are also plenty of other goods that are allowed to go to Iran that won't be stopped by customs, but can be repurposed by the regime.

Speaker 23 In 2017, Bosch, the German engineering company, sold Iran thousands of CCTV cameras. Last year, activists inside the country claimed the cameras were being used to crack down on protesters.

Speaker 23 Bosch says it wasn't aware the cameras were being used that way and that it didn't sell them directly to end customers.

Speaker 23 The sales were legal, but the case caused a backlash and they were caused to boycott the company.

Speaker 23 Because that's the risk anyone who trades with a country like Iran takes. You can't control how your products will be used.

Speaker 23 And Germany is doing far more of this type of trade than any other EU member state. It's Iran's biggest trading partner in the block.

Speaker 23 In 2023, trade from Germany to Iran was worth more than 1.2 billion euros. That's more than double that of Iran's next biggest EU trade partner.

Speaker 25 Well, I think Germany is the economic powerhouse of the European Union, right? Why is Germany the economic powerhouse? Because

Speaker 25 we are export champions, as they call Germany. And that also means exporting into Iran.
So Iran is just part of the whole puzzle.

Speaker 23 It's worth remembering here that Iran has been increasingly belligerent recently, firing missiles at Israel, supporting attacks on ships crossing the Gulf Straits, and internally it's killed hundreds of protesters in the past five years and arrested thousands.

Speaker 23 To be fair to Germany, trade has significantly fallen in the past year, in large part because of those increasingly strained political relations.

Speaker 25 So you have these really harsh critiques out there.

Speaker 23 Activists, journalists, and now also politicians in Germany are calling for tougher sanctions and stricter rules to prevent all dual-use products from reaching the regime.

Speaker 25 We do see parliamentarians speaking out against these practices. They are from the Social Democrats and the Greens who are in power, but also opposition politicians from the Conservative CDU.

Speaker 25 They say we must finally restrict these effectively and regulate it at a European level. If they don't, if they aren't changing it, that's the power of business in Germany for you.

Speaker 1 Hey friends, it's Nikayla from the podcast Side Hustle Pro.

Speaker 3 I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without screens, and the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver.

Speaker 5 My kids are obsessed.

Speaker 6 Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen.

Speaker 15 Hours of stories, music, podcasts, and and more and no screens or ads with hundreds of options for ages zero to twelve it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again and again check it out at yotoplay.com y-ot-o-p-l-a-y.com hey ron reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now mint mobile is offering you the gift of 50 off unlimited to be clear that's half price not half the service mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price so that means a half day.

Speaker 20 Yeah?

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Speaker 23 Do you? Yeah.

Speaker 23 A couple of days later, I'm sitting in the studio with Claudia, who I'm working with on this series, and we're waiting for an interview to start. when

Speaker 23 it's a WhatsApp message from Martin Hahn, which I read aloud. Oh my god, I just had a long chat with Peter Valiscick.
He called me after I reached out to his wife a few days ago, Martin.

Speaker 23 Hi, Martin. Can you talk?

Speaker 23 This is particularly exciting because when I talk to Peter Valiszczek, I'm always a bit worried things are being lost in translation.

Speaker 23 This is the first time we have someone on our team questioning him in German about his business empire.

Speaker 25 I said, this is such a hard business to do, exporting into heavily sanctioned. And he said, ha ha, yeah, a customs officer also asked me that.
This is this whole thing.

Speaker 25 He thinks he's this renegade businessman doing business with the axes of evil. He also probably made good money.

Speaker 23 Martin Hahn says the conversation was pretty friendly on the face of it,

Speaker 23 but it had an undertone.

Speaker 25 And what I found very striking in my position as a journalist, when I talked to him towards the end of our conversation in the context of him doing business in North Korea, he said, Do you know why journalists are being executed in North Korea?

Speaker 25 I said, no, let me tell me. And he said, well, because they're too curious.

Speaker 25 There is obviously a way of reading that as a threat into our direction.

Speaker 23 Back in 2012, Marcus Helwig, the journalist who was imprisoned in Iran, was confronted with the same hostile Peter Valaschek when he went to his office to ask him about the truth serum.

Speaker 30 And he was immediately very aggressive. So he asked me to leave.
So I was leaving his office and on the street he was insulting me and

Speaker 30 threatened me and

Speaker 30 was mocking about the custom, it's a German custom, so they can't do anything to me.

Speaker 30 I'm safe here.

Speaker 23 I'm safe here. There it is again.
That same sense of impunity Peter Valiszek had when he walked into the police station with my friend Mike right at the start of this story.

Speaker 23 It's like he's untouchable. like he's somehow protected.
And maybe that's how he feels.

Speaker 30 It was shocking for me that

Speaker 30 there are still a lot of loopholes so that you can do this kind of business, you know?

Speaker 23 Peter Walischek seems to know how to play the system.

Speaker 23 If he's been prosecuted by the German authorities, it hasn't stopped him.

Speaker 23 A quarter of a century after he sent those chemicals to Iran that could be used to make mustard gas, he's sending banned substances like truth serum.

Speaker 23 It's clear those he's selling to still see him as a middleman, an enabler. In fact, he's felt comfortable expanding his trade into other countries with brutal regimes.

Speaker 30 For him, it's

Speaker 30 just a business, you know.

Speaker 23 No gevissen.

Speaker 23 Possibly the only word I know in German. Something I had to learn to question Peter Walisczek.
A gewissen. A conscience.

Speaker 30 Yeah, no gevissen. Yes.

Speaker 30 Not at all.

Speaker 23 When I try and put all this to Peter Valiscick, try to push him on his business deals and his relationships with sanctioned regimes around the world, he won't be drawn. And then he drops a bombshell.

Speaker 23 Something he seems to think wipes the slate clean.

Speaker 20 And then I said, what shall I do?

Speaker 20 Yeah, I have some

Speaker 20 Buddhist monks who are German. Then I said perhaps it's something for me and then I was reading the books.

Speaker 23 Peter Wausczyk is studying to be a Buddhist monk.

Speaker 20 Then I was speaking with

Speaker 20 monks and

Speaker 20 now it's a question

Speaker 20 should I go 800 kilometers from Bangkok down?

Speaker 23 And it's not in his native Germany.

Speaker 20 I'm going to

Speaker 20 Thailand, and it's no problem.

Speaker 23 But actually,

Speaker 23 there really might be a problem because Thailand does have an extradition agreement with the US.

Speaker 21 Peter Walicek pled guilty to the crime, so he'll be warranted until he's dead.

Speaker 21 I'd be happy to dismiss the warrant once he's dead.

Speaker 23 That's next time on the Gasman.

Speaker 30 Individuals like that are extremely dangerous.

Speaker 23 So it might be some kind of nerve agent.

Speaker 25 It might be.

Speaker 20 Forget this fucking human rights. I hate it.
There is no human rights.

Speaker 24 Thank you for listening to The Gas Man. It's reported by Chloe Hedgematayou and produced by me, Claudia Williams.
It's written by both of us.

Speaker 24 Gary Marshall is the narrative editor and Jasper Corbett is the editor. The sound design is by Hannah Varrell.
Original theme music by Tom Kinsella. With additional reporting by Martin Hahn.

Speaker 24 This episode was fact-checked by Jess Swinburne. With thanks to Kavita Puri, Matt Russell, Katie Gunning and Martin Hahn.

Speaker 24 You can listen to more episodes of The Gas Man today by subscribing to Tortoise Plus or by downloading the Tortoise app.

Speaker 24 You can listen to our previous investigations right here on Tortoise Investigates while you wait for the next episode.

Speaker 24 And to hear more from our award-winning newsroom, search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 24 Tortoise

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