Austria will convene the National Security Council because of Russian espionage in the country: ‘It threatens our country!’

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer says the arrest in recent days of a former Austrian intelligence officer on serious charges of spying for Russia suggests Austria needs to beef up its security to prevent Russian infiltration. The allegations against Egisto Ott, who worked for an intelligence agency and whose arrest was announced on Friday, are “serious” and prompted Nehammer to call a meeting of Austria’s National Security Council, the chancellor said. Ott has denied the facts all this time.

“On the one hand, these accusations must be addressed by justice. On the other hand, an assessment and clarification of the security situation of the republic is needed,” Nehammer said in a statement.

“We must avoid having Russian spies, networks threaten our country by infiltrating or instrumentalizing political parties and networks,” the Austrian chancellor said.

The Council, which consists of the Government as well as members of all political parties, is a key advisory group on security and defense matters.

The case is a complex one

The Vienna Criminal Court on Monday approved a 14-day extension of Ott’s remand in custody on the charges against him. Prosecutors in Vienna declined to elaborate on the espionage charges, but said they related to “abuse in office” and were “to the detriment of Austria,” ABC News reports.

Last year, Britain arrested five Bulgarian nationals and a sixth in February and accused them of being members of a Russian spy ring working with Jan Marsalek, the fugitive former chief operating officer of Wirecard, the German payment processing company that collapsed in 2020. Joint reporting by Der Spiegel, German public broadcaster ZDF, Austrian newspaper Der Standard and Russian investigative platform The Insider revealed last month that Ott and another former Austrian intelligence officer were suspected of spying on potential targets in Europe and that they passed the information on to Jan Marsalek, who they claim has had ties to Russian intelligence since at least 2014. They also reported that Ott and his colleague helped Marsalek secretly escape from Austria on a private ship in 2020 after the collapse of Wirecard. Ott dismissed the allegations against him as baseless in a recent interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, the source said.

There were previous allegations against Ott

In 2017, Western intelligence agencies warned their Austrian counterparts about Ott’s potential spying for Russia. Ott was suspended from his job at BVT in 2017 and was briefly arrested in 2021, but was released again after a short time. Austria last month expelled two Russian diplomats from the Russian embassy in Vienna in what Austrian officials said was related to espionage.