GRU’s Austrian General Unmasked
Russia’s shadowy and sinister military spy service, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, GRU for short, has been covered frequently at Top Secret Umbra, from its moles burrowed inside French and American intelligence to its aggressive hacking operations against the West.
In an exclusive report last month, TSU revealed that GRU played a mysterious but significant role in the massive financial scandal surrounding Wirecard, the suddenly imploded German online payment processing firm. In particular, the Austrian national Jan Marsalek, Wirecard’s longtime COO who has gone missing just like more than $2 billion in funds did this summer when the company evaporated in what seems to be a gigantic case of corporate fraud, had important ties to GRU. These clandestine connections now raise awkward questions about what Marsalek and his once-lauded tech firm were really up to.
Moreover, as TSU asked, “How did Marsalek, who had no official position in Vienna, obtain classified information from the Austrian security service?” The answer seems to be that he had a special friend in high places in Vienna, as last month’s exclusive explained:
Part of this mystery can be revealed. NATO intelligence sources tell me that a serving Austrian army general is at the center of this scandal. The general has unconcealed pro-Kremlin views, in fact he sits on the board of the Austrian-Russian Friendship Society as well as the controversial, Putin-friendly Berlin think-tank Dialog of Civilizations (the latter has successfully leveraged the Austrian military to push Kremlin propaganda under NATO auspices).* The general is believed by Western counterintelligence to be the person who leaked Austrian classified information to Jan Marsalek. Since the Austrian military has problems with senior officers who turn out to be longtime GRU agents, this matter requires further investigation.
Now I can name that Austrian general. He is Brigadier Gustav Gustenau, a 60-year-old one-star who works in the security policy directorate of the Austrian defense ministry in Vienna, where he has been assigned for the last 20 years. He is well connected in European defense, think-tank and security circles and has churned out lots of wonky papers and is known for his pro-Russian views.
Gustenau was outed by the German newsmagazine FOCUS, which reported that he has been “in direct contact with a Russian who, according to Western intelligence services, had been with GRU for a long time and still had close ties there.” The missing Herr Marsalek, who according to this report has absconded to Moscow with help from Kremlin spies, got involved with an odd effort in 2017 to rebuild war-torn Libya with Russian help – with assistance from Gustenau, who assured Wirecard of the Austrian MoD’s financial support for the project. “All trails lead to Moscow” in the Wirecard scandal, as FOCUS put it succinctly.
Despite his unmasking as a Friend of GRU, there’s no indication yet that Brigadier Gustenau is leaving his senior post inside the MoD. Western counterintelligence believes that Gustenau has been even chummier with GRU than the German media report suggests. My sources in Vienna tell me that he’s still on the job this week, even after the FOCUS story went to press. While Austria’s tolerance for Russian espionage on its soil is unusually high by any standards, one might hope that Gustenau’s relationship with Kremlin intelligence would be too much even for Vienna to ignore.
Developing…
*In error last month I placed Gustenau on the Dialog of Civilizations’ board. While he has participated in DOC events, and is featured on their YouTube page, he is not on the think-tank’s board. He is on the board of the Austrian-Russian Friendship Society, however.