An Austrian court has found former intelligence officer Egisto Ott guilty of spying for Russia, in one of the country’s most significant espionage cases in recent years.
A Vienna court ruled that Egisto Ott, 63, had assisted Russian intelligence by providing sensitive information and access to official data, acting at the behest of Jan Marsalek, a fugitive former executive of the collapsed German payments firm Wirecard. Ott was sentenced to four years and one month in prison and has announced plans to appeal the verdict.
Prosecutors said Ott carried out unauthorized searches in police and intelligence databases to identify individuals of interest to Moscow, including dissidents and former intelligence figures. Among those targeted was investigative journalist Christo Grozev, whose Vienna address was allegedly passed on to Marsalek’s network, prompting security concerns that ultimately forced him to leave Austria.
The court also found that Ott supplied equipment and data to Russian-linked operatives. This included a secure SINA-S laptop used for encrypted communications by European Union governments, as well as mobile phones belonging to officials from Austria’s interior ministry. According to prosecutors, he received financial compensation for some of these activities.
Ott denied the charges, maintaining that he had been acting under instructions linked to a Western intelligence operation rather than on behalf of Moscow. However, the court concluded that his actions had supported “a secret intelligence service of the Russian Federation to the detriment of the Republic of Austria.”
