In 2020, the Financial Times exposed a €2 billion 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.
This season on Hot Money: Agent of Chaos, Jones investigates Wirecard’s chief operating officer, who vanished just as Wirecard collapsed. And turned out to also be a Russian spy.
From an Ibizan sting operation to an attempted takeover of the Austrian intelligence service, his reporting spirals into a world of warlords, espionage, and disinformation.
All in an attempt to answer one question: Who is the real Jan Marsalek? And what does his secret life reveal about the powerful forces he serves?
I mean, all of that was investigated by the German press (and to some degree the justice system) and discussed for years now in the public mainstream. It’s good to give an overview of this insane affair in English, but calling it an investigation is a bit much.
(I know this is just kayfabe so I don’t know why it irritates me so much. Probably because it’s a fairly widely known story in Germany. It’s akin to a TV historian saying something like “I’m going to Egypt to investigate Cleopatra’s life” when in reality they show up at two or three sites chosen by their local fixer for their beautiful background and recite what scholarship already knew a hundred years ago. It’s just all so unnecessarily fake)