Austria, a new cozy nest for spies from Russia

The Austrian Minister of Justice recently declared that she wanted to put an end to the image of “a haven of peace for spies” from which her country suffers. The government now wants to toughen convictions for espionage and give the police more resources to investigate.

The announcements from the Austrian government come after the arrest on March 29, 2024 of a former agent suspected of having sold information to Russia. The Austrian authorities know this man well. In 2017, Egisto Ott, an agent specializing in monitoring extremism at the BVT, the federal office for the protection of the Constitution, had already been suspended and suspected of having sold confidential information to Russia. But very quickly, and quite miraculously, he was cleared by the courts and reinstated in another department at the Ministry of the Interior.

This is probably what shakes the Austrian political class the most, because in the middle of the legislative campaign in Austria, all the parties are accusing each other of having maintained links with Egisto Ott. His arrest reveals the deep degree of his infiltration into institutions and through him, that of Russian intelligence.

The Austrian Chancellor, Karl Nehammer, took this issue very seriously during his visit to Paris on April 1. “This is a very serious national security matter. The stakes are enormous and we must assess the impact on our domestic policy, he declared. Understand how intelligence services, in this case, those of the Russian Federation, have visibly begun to infiltrate our institutions, but also influenced the political decision-making process in our country. We have to look at this closely, because it is an attack on our democracy and on our institutions.”

A spy cleared, but still in cahoots with Moscow

Egisto Ott was suspended in 2017, then cleared, but he never stopped working with Russia. He is suspected, for example, of having transmitted in 2022 the address of Cristo Grozev, a journalist from the investigative site Bellingcat. This site is at the origin of the revelations on the methods of Novichok poisoning, by intelligence, of Russian military agents acting abroad. Another feat of arms was the delivery of three mobile phones of senior Austrian officials to Russian intelligence via a Bulgarian network. These three phones fell into the water during an eventful outing on the Danube and which had been entrusted for repair to the BVT, the former service of Egisto Ott.

In total, he is said to have carried out 380 illegal searches of the Austrian police database, and all these details come from a recent report (link in English) from the British Royal United Services Institute, which explains how Russia is seeking to revive its operations “unconventional” abroad. According to this report, the broadcast in Germany of a conversation between two army officers on the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine or the assassination in Spain of the Russian deserter pilot, Maxim Kuzminov, confirm that intelligence has reactivated their networks, with the aim of destabilizing Europe.