# Austrian prosecutors indict former intelligence officer in Russia-linked spying scandal
On Aug. 29, 2025, Austrian prosecutors moved one of the country's most sensitive espionage investigations into court, indicting former intelligence officer Egisto Ott on charges that include espionage to the detriment of Austria, abuse of office and support for a Russian intelligence service. The case sits at the center of what prosecutors and investigators have described as Austria's biggest spying scandal in decades.
According to the Vienna prosecutors' statement, Ott is accused of collecting sensitive information and personal data from police databases between 2017 and 2021 and passing it to fugitive former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek and unidentified representatives of Russian intelligence. Marsalek, once the chief operating officer of the German payments company, has been wanted on suspicion of fraud since Wirecard collapsed in 2020 and is now thought to be in Russia.
The indictment also says Ott accepted financial rewards for the information. The criminal allegations are broad, but they share a common thread: access to official systems allegedly being used to move state and personal information into the hands of people linked to Russian intelligence. Prosecutors said the indictment was filed with the state court in Vienna, setting up the next phase of a case that has already consumed investigators for months.
The file includes an especially striking allegation from November 2022. Prosecutors say Ott, at Marsalek's request, handed over a laptop containing hardware used by European Union countries for secure communications to an unidentified accomplice in exchange for 20,000 euros. The computer was then delivered to a Russian intelligence service, according to the prosecutors' account. If proven, the episode would suggest the inquiry reached beyond classic data theft and into equipment that could affect secure state communications.
A second suspect, a police officer whose name has not been released, was also charged with abetting some of Ott's actions by passing on personal information without authorization. That charge broadens the case beyond a single former officer and points to potential misuse of police access inside the system. The prosecutors did not say how the two suspects coordinated or what other material may have been shared.
Ott was arrested in March last year and released three months later after a court said it did not see a present danger of further offending. The new indictment does not resolve the underlying questions, and it does not amount to a conviction. But it does push the case into a public courtroom and place pressure on Austrian institutions to explain how alleged intelligence leaks, database access and personal contacts were allowed to intersect for years.
If convicted, Ott and the second suspect could face prison sentences of between six months and five years. The figures suggest the charges are serious even by the standards of an espionage case, though the larger damage may already be reputational. For Austria, which has spent years grappling with the Marsalek story, the indictment keeps alive the question of how deeply Russian intelligence may have been able to penetrate sensitive circles in and around the state.
