Revisionist History - Warlords, Espionage, and Disinformation | Introducing Hot Money: Agent of Chaos

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

In 2020, the Financial Times exposed a 2 billion euro fraud at Wirecard, a high-flying German fintech. Many thought that was the end of the story. But for reporter Sam Jones, it was just the beginning.On Hot Money: Agent of Chaos, from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times, Jones investigates Wirecard’s chief operating officer who vanished just as Wirecard collapsed. And turned out to also be a Russian spy.Here’s episode 1. Listen to Hot Money: Agent of Chaos wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. Hello, hello. We'll be back very soon with more episodes of Revisionist History. But today, we're bringing you an episode of Hot Money, Agent of Chaos, another show from Pushkin Industries in collaboration with the Financial Times. In 2020, the Financial Times exposed a 2 billion euro fraud at Wirecard, a high-flying German fintech. Many thought that was the end of the story, but for reporter Sam Jones, it was just the

beginning. Jones investigates Wirecard's chief operating officer, Jan Marsalek, who vanished just as Wirecard collapsed and turned out to be a Russian spy. It's a story about espionage, fraud, and disinformation. If you enjoy this episode, listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos, wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. My favorite part of a book tour? The quiet moments in between when I get to really experience a place. On my last book tour, I found myself in Canada, my home country, exploring Toronto. I had a

whole bunch of appointments all around the city and I just walked everywhere and reminded myself all over again how fantastic Toronto is, how many amazing little neighborhoods, cafes and random side streets it has. I flew into Billy Bishop Airport, which is right downtown on an island off the mainland. And I walked to where I was staying. In how many major world-class cities in the world can you get off your plane and walk to your destination?

I think there's just one, Toronto. And I walked to the Airbnb where I was staying, of course. Are you planning travel? If you are, think about hosting your home on Airbnb so you can offer that same comfort to travelers. A stay at your place could be the highlight of someone else's vacation. Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, it's me, John Lovett, host of Love It or Leave It, America's number one late night political gay live comedy podcast. Each week I break down the biggest and dumbest stories in politics to help you keep up with and laugh at the news. It's amazing to think how much the show has changed. We're always pushing to make sure that we're doing a show you can't find anywhere else.

And this season, that's what I hope you'll find, not only in the jokes at the top of the show, but also in the interviews and segments we'll be doing with an incredible lineup of guests I'm really excited to talk to. Listen to episodes of Love It or Leave It every Saturday or watch on YouTube or come to a live show in LA.

You'll be amazed by what we cut. It's a winter's day in 2018. Paul Murphy is standing in front of the mirror of the gent's lavatory at work. He's changing for lunch. I've kind of stopped wearing ties, but I think I put a tie on for that occasion. Paul is in his mid-50s. He's got a slightly grizzled look about him. You wouldn't pick

him out in a crowd, but that's an advantage in his line of work. In his hands, Paul is holding a small silver disc about the size of a penny. He takes his shirt off, grabs a piece of medical tape, and fixes this disc onto his shoulder. Because this disc is a tiny microphone. He slips his white shirt back on, puts a jacket on top, and with one last glance in the mirror, he's ready for lunch. Paul is the head of investigations at the Financial Times in London. He takes a cab across town to Mayfair, to a venue called 45 Park Lane. It's one of those places that is priced to keep out ordinary people.

It's all glass windows and bling and mirrored interiors and very few customers. Very few. It's Dubai style, essentially. As Paul walks in, he tries to keep his cool. Despite four decades in journalism, this is a first for him. He's never actually worn a wire himself. It's very, very nerve-racking. You know, I've got a bug on me.

You know, I didn't want our undercover team to get discovered. That would be hugely embarrassing. So I was, you know, nervous. The maître d' escorts Paul across the room, and there, rising from his chair, smiling courteously, and greeting Paul with a handshake, is the man he's come to meet, Jan Marselek. Very slim, athletic build, razor sharp blue suit. Paul came here to set a trap, to get this successful businessman on tape, but by the

time they finish their meal, he wonders if he's the one who has walked into a trap. If I'm honest, I felt a bit amateurish, you know. We were out of our depth. This guy was very, very slick, controlled, careful, polished. And, you know, I'm not. My name is Sam Jones and I'm a journalist with the Financial Times. I'm a foreign correspondent based in Central Europe. This lunch you've just heard about, it's the unexpected beginning of an investigation that has, in one way or another, preoccupied me for the past five years. At the centre of it is the man in the sharp blue suit, Jan Marselek.

A man who, I discovered, is so fascinated by risk and deceit that one identity, one life, wasn't enough for him. I find it's often people like this, the most unusual people, who reveal universal truths. The fact that we're all inventors of our own personal narratives. How fictions can be stitched together to create realities. This tale begins in London and Munich, but leaps across the globe, from Libya to Austria, from Bulgaria to Afghanistan, from the Côte d'Azur to Moscow. Jan Masilek's life is a window into a hidden world of geopolitical power games. Games which, in ways big and small, govern our lives. Games which have never felt more relevant. Or the players of

them, harder to fathom. This is a story about espionage. About Europe. About Russia. And ultimately, America. From the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries, this is Hot Money, Season 3, Agent of Chaos. Episode 1, The Bride. Paul Murphy hired me to work for the FT 17 years ago. It's been a long time since Paul was my actual boss, but he was and still is a mentor to me. All of my best habits in journalism and some of my worst ones, I've picked up from Paul. Pretty much since starting my career, every couple of months or so, I end up at lunch with him, in Sweetings. It's a noisy, crowded fish restaurant, deep in the city, London's financial district. It's distinctly old school. Even a bowler hat wouldn't look out of place.

And coming here, it underscores lesson number one in the Paul Murphy School of Journalism. You have to get out of the bloody office. Get out of the bloody office. Young reporters in particular think that you can do everything digitally, but actually you get a lot more information of somebody face to face. You have to win people's trust. And one way of doing that is have lunch with people. It's a great social setting to develop a relationship with somebody who you need them to trust you.

I want to paint a bit of a picture for you about Paul because it pays in this story to try and get the measure of people's character. Or at least, to try and understand the version of themselves people present to the world, and why. Although Paul spends a lot of time at lunch, he's definitely not just another city soak. Most people tend to miss the little silver ring he's wearing, a skull designed by his daughter. People miss a lot about Paul, but that's part of the trick. He's very good at being underestimated. And because of that trick. He's very good at being underestimated. And because of that, he's also very good at getting people to trust him.

To talk to him. And to give him information. To understand why I was drawn into this story, you need to know a bit about the reporting that was dominating Paul's life back in 2018. He and his star reporter, Dan McCrum, were neck deep investigating a German company called Wirecard. A company that was run by the man in the razor sharp blue suit, the man who Paul would eventually meet for lunch in Mayfair.

Jan Marcelek. Wirecard ran the financial plumbing behind billions of online transactions. It was so successful at that point, it was even secretly plotting a takeover of Germany's biggest bank. So to the world, Wirecard was a booming digital payments company. To Paul and his reporter Dan, Wirecard was a huge fraud, and they were well on the way to proving it. But it was no huge fraud and they were well on the way to proving it. But it was no normal fraud.

Because for months Paul and Dan, they suspected they'd been under intense surveillance, all directed by someone at Wirecard from its base in southern Germany. I mean it's kind of like almost sounds silly to recount it, but you know, we were paranoid about being followed around London. We would get on and off tube trains quickly, just in case somebody was getting on the same tube train as us. We would turn off our phones so that our location couldn't be tracked. Dan had already had his emails hacked and some of them leaked online.

It was an attempt to embarrass and discredit him. There had been a mounting and seemingly coordinated attack on his reputation on social media. When Paul told me all of this over a series of lunches at Sweetings, I guess he was doing so because he wanted to know if I had any contacts, in private intelligence or even in the actual intelligence services, people who might be able to help. Because the subject I really write about, the subject that has become my specialism at the FT, is spying. Paul was probably also telling me out of frustration, because back then he and Dan had hit a bit of a wall in their reporting. They'd published all they could about Wirecard based on the evidence they had gathered so far, but they still didn't

have a smoking gun, and Wirecard's aggressive lawyers, Schilling's, had meanwhile come down hard on them. Dan had only just avoided a ruinous lawsuit. It wasn't a great time. Dan M. Martin, Author, The Wirecard It was this sense that, what have we got ourselves into? That was like a real low moment. Maybe I've got myself into a bit too much hot water here. You do start to worry what you've sort of brought down on your family. It was quite oppressive. Jason There was this turning point for Dan. One of his sources rang him up to tell him he'd been roughed up on the street by two thugs right outside his children's school. They demanded to know if this source had passed

on confidential information about Wirecard. Hearing this sent Dan into a bit of a tailspin, because suddenly he was worrying about the safety of his own family. Dan Moller 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. I mean, the worst moment is we had just moved into this rented house and I suddenly realized I haven't checked the lock on this patio door at the back of the house, which we'd never used. And it just slides straight open. Like our house had essentially been unlocked for the last couple of months.

And at that point, I really did start freaking out about security, who might be after us. And I basically became really paranoid. It was right at the peak of this paranoia that something even stranger happened. Something that led to that lunch at 45 Park Lane. Paul was talking to one of his oldest sources. And we got onto the subject of wirecard. Just a completely, you know, innocent, relaxed conversation. And this guy just suddenly said, you know that they'll pay

you a lot of money to stop writing about them. And I kind of laughed. And he stopped me and said, no, they will pay you $10 million to stop writing about them. I don't know if you work in the kind of job or live the kind of life where you've ever been bribed. But even as a journalist for the FT, this doesn't really happen, let alone for such a ridiculous sum of money. I mean, for $10 million, what would you do? And as such, it takes Paul a while to realise that this is a serious offer.

How do you know this? he asks. Through my son, his source tells him. He's got to know someone at Wirecard pretty well. They've been out together a few times, carousing. He's called Jan Marselek. And then, Paul's source, he says something which makes Paul clock that this offer is real. Marselek is paying this guy more than $200,000 just to convey the message. You should meet him for lunch, he suggests.

So what does Paul say? Tell me when and tell me where. Paul has no intention of taking the bribe, but this backchannel offer, it seems to confirm everything they suspect about Wirecard. Absolutely confirmed all our suspicions. Which were that the company is a criminal enterprise? Absolutely. This was kind of tangible evidence. All they need now is for Marseilleck to offer the bribe himself and to get that on tape.

It's time for the FT to mount its own surveillance operation. So that day at 45 Park Lane, the formal introduction's over, it's time to order. Steaks, the overpriced speciality of this place. Around £170 for a 6oz filet mignon. Right from the start though, Paul begins to feel that Maslek isn't quite what he was expecting. Paul is on edge, but he's not alone. To his relief, it's not long before he spots his undercover support team, three FT colleagues who pose as wealthy ladies catching up over lunch.

They've snagged a table just next to him, and they look pretty convincing. One of the reporters places her handbag on the back of a chair. Hidden inside, a camera films the lunch at an angle, catching Jan Marselek in profile. You can hear the tenor of his voice, but the background noise means it's impossible to make out his words. To me, watching this footage back, it's striking how animated he is. He turns from side to side, addressing everyone at the table as he talks. His face lights up.

He's sort of holding court, emphasising his words with expansive hand gestures. He almost looks like a politician. The longer the conversation goes on like this, the more clear it becomes to Paul that Marseillec is the one in control. This guy is expansive and engaging, charming, but not at all defensive. There's no trace of anger or guilt or care? He gently protests about the FT's unfair coverage of Wacard as if it's been an inconvenience, but his whole tone seems to be saying, let's put this behind us. As they settle into the meal, Paul nudges the

conversation into more dubious terrain, eager to get something incriminating even if it's just a hint of something on tape and on camera. I certainly talked about the kind of the aggression that the business had shown us. And we also talked about whether journalists were corrupt. And he absolutely assured me that he knew that journalists could be bought. I remember saying, we don't take bribes. And I remember him very specifically saying, I know that Paul, I know you don't. I've seen evidence that you don't take bribes. And I remember him very specifically saying, I know that Paul, I know you don't, I've seen evidence that you don't take bribes. And I thought, ah, you see my bank account.

I remember the kind of jolting that he was kind of like stating this so openly. But the conversation continues in this vein, nothing concrete. The killer offer of a bribe Paul had been hoping for. Well, it's clear that Marseilleck is far too savvy an operator to make it here and now at their first meeting. Pretty quickly, you know, came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to be offered a bribe in front of these people. A bit of a damp squib, in a way. Yes, it was.

So Paul is now left wondering, what does Marcelek want from him? Why has this meeting happened if he's not actually going to make him some kind of offer? The lunch lasted about 90 minutes, and at the end, Marcelek insisted on paying. And pulled out a gold credit card, a novelty credit card of solid gold.

Neil Was he a bit of a show off? Paul Well, yes. You know, we're in one of the most expensive restaurants in London, eating kind of £200 stake, and he was paying for the bill with a gold credit card, so yeah. Neil As Paul leaves the restaurant, he almost laughs a gold credit card, so yeah. As Paul leaves the restaurant, he almost laughs at himself for having thought he'd be heading back with something explosive. But he also realises that this experience actually hasn't been a busted flush.

Far from it. Meeting Jan Maslek has only intrigued Paul Moore. It's put him into 3D. There's something about Maslek he can't quite put his finger on. 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? And indeed, Paul does meet with him again. That's coming up after the break. We took a family trip last year to Montreal.

It's not that far from where I live in upstate New York. Took my wife's cousins and our eldest kid. We all piled in the minivan and headed north. And what was the big draw? Aside, of course, from the charming streets of old Montreal or the magnificent park in the middle of the city or the 19th century beauty of McGill University, the food. Oh my God, I can recite to you from memory every meal I had. The best Jewish delis in North America are in Montreal by far. It's the smoked meat capital of the world.

You could just walk from downtown to the Plateau and go into literally any one of a million cafes and have the meal of your life. And where do we stay? We want it to be in the real Montreal. And the fastest way to be a real Montrealer is to use Airbnb. If you're planning a trip soon, consider hosting your home on Airbnb while you're away.

It's an easy and simple way to make some extra money that can go towards your next vacation. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, it's me, John Lovett, host of Love It or Leave It, America's number one late night political gay live comedy podcast. Each week I break down the biggest and dumbest stories in politics to help you keep up with and laugh at the news.

It's amazing to think how much the show has changed. We're always pushing to make sure that we're doing a show you can't find anywhere else. And this season, that's what I hope you'll find not only in the jokes at the top of the show, but also in the interviews and segments we'll be doing with an incredible lineup. I guess I'm really excited to talk to you. Listen to episodes of Love It or Leave It every Saturday or watch on YouTube or come to a live show in LA. You'll be amazed by what we cut. When Paul first started telling me about Wirecard, I think I treated it all as entertaining table

talk. Paul is a great teller of stories, and I always enjoyed hearing the gossip about what his investigations team was up to. After he told me about meeting Marcelek, though, something began to needle at me. Just a feeling about what kind of person Marcelek was. A feeling I couldn't pin down. Until I heard about the second lunch. One month after that lunch at Park Lane, Paul met Marcelek again. This time without undercover colleagues or secret cameras. It was just the two of them. They met at the Lanesborough, another

high-end hotel in London. We talked about geopolitics, we talked about technology, we talked about finance, you know, we talked about the state of the world. He had interesting opinions and information on all these things. If I'm honest, at this stage, I'd become fascinated by this character because he seemed to know so many people. And I was thinking, well, you know, he's probably not going to offer me a bribe. We're not going to just catch him. He's not that stupid. This guy is smart and he knows people and he has information. At this point, did it occur to you that he'd charmed you in any way?

Yes, it did, but he was a charming man. Did you like him? Yeah, yes I liked him. If Wirecard, if you hadn't have known it to be a fraud, do you think you would have sought to stay in touch with him? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, in actual fact, you know, my thinking after that second lunch, I did.

I actually thought I'm going to, you know, develop this guy as a source. What did you think he was hoping to get out of a relationship with you? Actually, it was very clear. We posed an existential risk to Wirecard. He knew that by building a relationship directly with me that he could potentially stop us writing about them or at least he'd get the kind of intel in advance about what we were thinking. So as Paul tells me about all of this, the feeling I get most is that a game is afoot. And both Paul and Marcellek are enjoying playing it. They've both established rapport, they're both working to build trust, but they also

test each other, push, try to implicate each other in this polite conversation. And all of this grips me because in it I see so much of the kind of psychology that I've spotted glimpses of covering intelligence and espionage. I recognise the shape of this kind of interaction. A certain amused matter of fact detachment from things, despite the stakes. Think about it, Marcelek is lunching happily with a man who is trying to destroy the company he works for and put him in jail. And Paul? Well, in a funny way, Paul is being encouraged into a minor transgression. Something that almost felt to me like a textbook trick from an intelligence recruitment manual. An indiscretion that might later make you vulnerable.

Because Paul does all of this, works Marseillec, behind the back of the lead reporter on the Wirecard project, Dan McCrumb. Why were you dealing with Marseillec and not Dan? Dan and I are different characters. Dan is a guy, you know, he's tall and he has all these features in the right place and if your daughter brought him home as a boyfriend you'd be really happy. He's a good guy, he's intelligent, he's articulate, he's well-educated but actually actually actually Dan Dan is lethal. Dan's like kind of smiling Axeman. He's dangerous. He's forensic. Yes he's

absolute forensic and he won't let it lie and you know I have a different style. I'm much softer and I chat people up and I present myself as being very kind of club-able. All journalists have different styles. I mean I think you're probably more comfortable playing a role as well, no? Possibly, yes. Reading between the lines, I think probably a doubting part of him was also wondering whether the wirecard investigation was at a dead end. The threat of a lawsuit from Shillings meant their reporting had stalled, and if that was the case, it might be worth Paul pursuing Master Leck as a source of his own, someone who could help him with other stories.

Then, around six months after that second meeting, Paul gets a call from an intermediary. Marcel Ecke conveys that he has something very interesting to offer. Documents. He hints at what they're about, and it sounds outlandish. But it's enough of a hint that Paul agrees to Marcel Ecke's suggestion that he fly out to Munich, where Marcel X lives, in order to get them. I kept it completely private, only just the managing editor at the DFT knew what I was doing. They meet at the Kieferchenke. It's a Munich institution, patrician, reassuringly expensive, white tablecloths, panelled rooms, but warm and efficient service. And it's practically Marcel X's house restaurant.

Jan was waiting for me outside. We went in. We had a little private room. I remember having salmon with caviar. And as they talked, Marcel X pushed a brown folder full of papers across the table towards Paul. But of course, it's in a restaurant. I couldn't pull them out and start reading through them.

I just had to politely say, thank you very much. I'll have a read of those. And then we just had a kind of stilted, awkward lunch conversation. We talked about his bad back. If I'm honest, I was trying to get out of the lunch as quickly as possible, because I wanted to see what was in the folder. They finished lunch. Marcelek said he had to go out of the lunch as quickly as possible because I wanted to see what was in the folder.

They finished lunch. Marcelek said he had to go back to the office. The restaurant has lots of kind of separate bars and rooms. And so I literally went down some stairs and found myself a little corner and sat down and opened the folder. These documents, they related to something that happened in the UK that spring.

Something awful, which had shocked the whole country. Yesterday afternoon, passersby noticed two people, apparently unconscious, on a bench in Salisbury. The Salisbury poisonings. As a police presence remains here in the city whilst they investigate, residents and visitors to the city have been reacting to the news. Yeah, just completely surprised and shocked that something could happen like this in Salisbury. An assassination attempt against a former spy using one of the deadliest nerve agents

ever created, a chemical that only a handful of government specialists knew about, Novichok 234. The spy was found half dead alongside his unconscious daughter, but thanks to some remarkable medical work, they both survived. Another local resident, a mother of three, did not. She died after coming into contact with the Novichok. It had been hidden by the assassins in a perfume bottle. The intended target was soon identified as a Russian intelligence officer who had fled to Britain in 2010.

Prime Minister Theresa May announced to a shocked parliament that Moscow was to blame. The government has concluded that the two individuals named by the police They announced to a shocked parliament that Moscow was to blame. The government has concluded that the two individuals named by the police and CPS are officers from the Russian Military Intelligence Service, also known as the GRU. The GRU, the main directorate, Russia's fearsome military intelligence agency. An organization with goals that should have consigned it to Cold War history. Misinformation, civil disorder, violence, assassinations.

Under Vladimir Putin's long watch, the GRU has quietly grown in power and influence. In the weeks that followed the poisoning, Russia aggressively denied its involvement. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, meanwhile, launched its own investigation, sending its experts to Salisbury to pour over the evidence. They produced a highly classified dossier based on shared intelligence and chemical analysis from the site. The dossier also included Russia's own version of events. These were the documents Paul now had in his hands. It was fascinating to read all this kind of close detail, you know, the Russian version of the story.

And then the other very interesting part of the documents was the actual formula for Novichok. The chemical diagram for the poison, a technical outline for something that had been kept hidden from the world for decades. A weapon of mass destruction. We took a family trip last year to Montreal. It's not that far from where I live in upstate New York. I took my wife's cousins and our eldest kid. We all piled in the minivan and headed north.

And what was the big draw? Aside, of course, from the charming streets of old Montreal, or the magnificent park in the middle of the city, or the 19th century beauty of McGill University, the food. Oh my God, I can recite to you from memory every meal I had. The best Jewish delis in North America are in Montreal, by far. It's the smoked meat capital of the world. You could just walk from downtown to the plateau

and go into literally any one of a million cafes and have the meal of your life. And where do we stay? We want it to be in the real Montreal. And the fastest way to be a real Montrealer is to use Airbnb. If you're planning a trip soon, consider hosting your home on Airbnb while you're away.

It's an easy and simple way to make some extra money that can go towards your next vacation. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, it's me, Jon Lovett, host of Love It or Leave It, America's number one late night political gay live comedy podcast. Each week I break down the biggest and dumbest stories in politics to help you keep up with and laugh at the news. It's amazing to think how much the show has changed.

We're always pushing to make sure that we're doing a show you can't find anywhere else. And this season, that's what I hope you'll find not only in the jokes at the top of the show, but also in the interviews and segments we'll be doing with an incredible lineup. I guess I'm really excited to talk to you. Listen to episodes of Love It or Leave It every Saturday

or watch on YouTube or come to a live show in LA. You'll be amazed by what we cut. Paul Fearnley, Ph.D. So what have we got? Fart one, two, three, four, five sort of staple sheaves of paper. Matthew Fearnley, Ph.D. Those documents that Marcelek handed over that day at the Keifer Shinga, Paul showed them to me. Paul Fearnley, Ph.D. And well, they're internal documents from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and these have been sort of illegally photocopied right? So I think they're photocopies anyway.

Yeah they're all kind of photocopies except that one is a PowerPoint presentation. They've all got barcodes on them. And this sort of big stamped watermark which says... This printout may contain OPCW confidential information warning. Yeah, they're all different copy numbers though as well aren't they? Yeah, which is kind of curious. That's one is 16, this one's 21. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is an international body based in

The Hague. Almost all of the world's big military powers are signatories. Its job is to police and monitor weapons like Novichok, to ensure they are never ever used. What was going through your head when you kind of first pulled this out of the manila envelope that they were all in? Well, I was looking for a story. You know, the Salisbury poisoning had been headline news for weeks on end. Suddenly, I had, you know, what clearly were kind of classified documents pertaining specifically to that event.

There had to be a story in it. You know, that's what I was struck at how detailed and careful and yet completely fanciful the Russian version of events was. In the documents, the Russians made the case that the British had manufactured Novichok. Because Salisbury is just down the road from Porton Down, a highly secure military research base. And the Russians, they argued that the British government had somehow leaked the Novichok from its own chemical research lab. You know, I asked him, you know, point blank, where did he get this information? What did he say? He said he got it from a friend.

And he did actually say that, you know, if I wanted further information, I should try him in future, that I'd be quite surprised at the sort of information he could access. So this was sort of like a little bit of an opening, kind of showing his wares, you know, that if you wanted to keep him onside and he could push other material your way. Yeah, absolutely that. He was basically saying, look, I have friends in interesting places. I can help you in the future. We were building a relationship on both sides.

While all of this unfolded, Dan McCrum, the lead reporter on the wirecard investigation, hadn't been sitting still. In fact, he'd just found his very own treasure trove of documents. And these documents, they would change everything, because they finally gave Dan the ammunition he needed to prove that Wirecard was a fraud, and that Marseilleck was at the centre of it. So when Paul got back to London and Dan told him all of this, Paul knew it was time to go back on the offensive against Wacard directly.

And also therefore, that it was time to fess up to Dan and to tell him he'd been secretly lunching with Marseillec over the past few months. Paul, you know, he'd gone to meet Marseillec for lunch and he was kind of cultivating this parallel kind of relationship with Marseillec. When did you find out about that and what was your first thought? Oh man. There are moments in life when you are taken by surprise. I basically think he hadn't wanted to like blow my mind whilst I was focused on getting the story because the important thing was to get the story out. But it had reached the point where it was sort of becoming embarrassing that he hadn't

mentioned that he had quietly been dining with Jan Maszlec. I'm like, sorry what? But then he goes, he's been flashing around top secret documents with a recipe for Novichok on them. I think my reaction was if he had just tried to tell me that Maslach had faked the moon landings. It was so completely out of left field that you're like, sorry, what did you just say? To be clear, we had no evidence that Marseillec actually had anything to do with carrying out the poisonings. But the fact that he even had these documents was a bombshell. Not only because the documents made it clear that Marcellek was entangled with something besides just a huge corporate fraud, but also because Marcellek had effectively

chosen to disclose this. Marcellek pulled the spotlight onto himself, and it made us realise how little we knew about him at all. At that point we just kind of had this sense that Marcelic was this kind of man of action and was mixed up somehow in Viennese politics. Wacard's aggressive surveillance of Paul and Dan intensified, and they managed to trace it back to a private security company in Vienna, the capital of Austria and Dan intensified, and they managed to trace it back to a private security company in Vienna, the capital of Austria, and Marseillex home city. Paul and Dan were now going to spend the next few months battling to prove the fraud with

the new documents Dan had received. But me? I was about to start a foreign posting, in Switzerland and in Austria. If I was going to be on the ground, Paul thought, then I could surely make some inquiries. We already knew that there was a big Vienna angle to all this. We just didn't know what the angle was. We just didn't know which doors you had to knock on. We didn't know who you needed to get to. Yeah, well, it worked. I remember thinking you needed to get to. Yeah, well it worked.

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 Jan Maselich, but you know, you were right. Sometimes it's the smallest, most unpromising or unexpected little thread that you pull on that suddenly unravels something. Sometimes that thread is just an intuition, a feeling about someone, a sense that there's definitely something more here I don't know about but that I recognize the shadow of. As it turned out, this particular trace, well, it would slowly unravel into a story that wasn't just the sordid tale of one well-connected fraudster. would slowly unravel into a story that wasn't just the sordid tale of one well-connected fraudster, but instead the tale of one of the biggest spy scandals to have hit Europe since the Cold War.

To this day I remember that first note coming back from you just saying that you needed a secure channel to communicate. The detail you put in that first note was just mind-boggling, absolutely shocking. It was like a whole world just opened up. You know, this was no longer just about some weird German corporate. There was this kind of huge geopolitical kind of side to the story that was only just coming into view. Maybe you've felt in recent years that the world is a less certain place. That from the background there are threats or worries you'd never had to think about before that are suddenly present. Wars that look like they might tip out of control, radical politicians tearing

at the threads of civil society, lies turned into truth by money. Well, this story is, in some senses, an accounting of that. A story that can sometimes make you realise how tissue-thin the idea of a stable, law-abiding society can be, one that's governed by economic, political and moral rules we've all agreed on. It's a story about what kind of people get drawn into the world on the other side of that, and what kind of world that is. A space carved out by crime and corruption,

where money and power are unchecked by laws, or borders, or markets. That kind of world might sound terrifying, but to some people it's irresistible. To some people it's not an alternative world at all. It's the real world. Coming up this season on Hot Money... I know politics is corrupt. I know everything. I know that. I know that.

I believe in all that. But this is too much. I thought, I hope that he will talk to you and you will be able to investigate on it and perhaps misdeeds and misbehaviour is stopped. Very fast actually he started then talking about his experience in Syria. He definitely has a view that he's operating with complete freedom to do whatever he likes. I don't know if they followed me to my home. The decision was very simple.

It was a choice between being killed or in prison. And the other option was just to try to get real freedom. How much of it was an act? How much was genius? How much was learned? How much was instinctive? I often ask myself now, did I know the true Yan at all? 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 Schakurji. Fact-checking by Kira Levine. Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorski and Marcelo de Oliveira, with additional sound design by Izzy Carter. Original music from Mathias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphonette. Our show art is by Sean Carney.

Our executive producers are Cheryl Brumley, Amy Gaines-McQuade, and Matthew Garahan. Additional editing by Paul Murphy. Special thanks to Rula Khalaf, Dan McCrum, Laura Clark, Alistair Macie, Manuela Zaragoza, Nigel Hansen, Vicky Merrick, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Jake Flanagan, Jacob Goldstein, Sarah Nix and Greta Cohn. I'm Sam Jones. Hey, it's me, Jon Lovett, host of Love It or Leave It, America's number one late night political gay live comedy podcast. Each week I break down the biggest and dumbest stories in politics to help you keep up with

and laugh at the news. It's amazing to think how much the show has changed. We're always pushing to make sure that we're doing a show you can't find anywhere else. And this season, that's what I hope you'll find not only in the jokes at the top of the show, but also in the interviews and segments we'll be doing with an incredible lineup. I guess I'm really excited to talk to you. Listen to episodes of Love It or Leave It every Saturday or watch on YouTube or come to a live show in LA. You'll be amazed by what we cut.

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