Telegraph reports ex-Wirecard fugitive Marsalek claimed role in Kurz's 2021 fall

Claims in the messages

According to documents obtained by The Telegraph and published on 7 November 2026, fugitive former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek wrote to Orlin Roussev on 22 October 2021. Roussev is described as the coordinator of a spy network that operated in the United Kingdom. In the exchange, Marsalek allegedly claimed that his group had succeeded in toppling Sebastian Kurz, who had announced his resignation as Austrian chancellor on 9 October 2021, about two weeks earlier. He reportedly described the method as seizing the mobile phone of a man who managed Kurz's secret campaign financing. Investigators read the messages as a claim of involvement, not as evidence of it, and the documents do not show that Marsalek organised the seizure or that Russian services caused Kurz's resignation.

The phone seizure and Kurz's resignation

The phone belonged to Thomas Schmid, a former senior official in the Austrian Finance Ministry and a close associate of Kurz. Austrian investigators seized the device in 2019, and the messages recovered from it became key evidence in several corruption investigations, including the advertising affair that ultimately led to Kurz's departure. Schmid is now a crown witness for the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor's Office (WKStA), according to German-language reporting. Kurz became chancellor in 2017 at the age of 31, the youngest head of government in the world at the time. Prosecutors searched the Chancellery, the Finance Ministry and the party headquarters on 6 October 2021, and the political pressure that followed led to his resignation. Kurz has consistently denied the corruption allegations and declined to comment on the newly found messages, while people close to him said he was surprised by the possibility of a link to Russia.

Marsalek and the spy network

Marsalek disappeared in June 2020, after the collapse of Wirecard, the German technology company. He is wanted for fraud under an international arrest warrant and is under investigation for espionage in several European countries, including Austria, his home country. Later reports indicated that he had worked for the Kremlin for more than a decade, and British police described his espionage activity as taking place on an 'industrial' scale. Roussev was convicted in the United Kingdom for espionage, and British police seized investigation material when the network was arrested in early 2023. According to Digi24, citing The Telegraph, the seized material contained hundreds of thousands of messages detailing planned operations on British territory. Some of it was passed to Austrian authorities, who are examining whether their own spies supplied information to Marsalek and, through him, to Russia.

Reaction and open questions

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, co-chair of the cross-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions and a former Conservative leader, said the Telegraph investigation showed how brazen Russia had become. He argued that Moscow did not care whether people believed it was behind such actions, because it considered the United Kingdom too weak to respond. Graeme Downie, a Labour MP on the defence select committee, called the newspaper's findings worrying. He added that Vladimir Putin's strategic aim was to divide democracies from one another. The Telegraph also reported that several European security agencies have long assessed that the Kremlin is trying to sow division and destabilise governments across the continent. Investigators have not independently confirmed Marsalek's claims, and the investigation is continuing.