Ott espionage case

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The former constitutional protection officer Egisto Ott

(Bild: APA/GEORG HOCHMUTH, romanevgenev, Krone KREATIV)

Two SINA laptops, i.e. specially secured devices used by the secret service, have now been seized in the course of a house search at his residence in Carinthia and in his apartment in Vienna in the case of the former constitutional protector Egisto Ott, who has since been arrested. These could turn out to be explosive evidence. Meanwhile, Ott is threatening to go on hunger strike during police questioning.

SINA stands for Secure Inter-Network Architecture, which enables the transmission and processing of sensitive information in insecure networks. The highly developed encryption technology is reportedly used by government investigation agencies, among others, to exchange information with partner services across national borders.

The SINA product family, developed since 2000, contains the only IP-based crypto systems approved by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) up to the highest national classification level ("top secret"). The focus here is on protecting electronic information from unauthorized access.

Former constitutional protection officer Egisto Ott

(Bild: APA/GEORG HOCHMUTH, romanevgenev, Krone KREATIV)

It is unclear what Ott intended to do with the laptops
The laptops that have now been seized are explosive evidence and could contain highly sensitive data. What Ott intended to do with these devices and how he came into possession of them is the subject of the ongoing investigation. He himself claims to have destroyed at least some of the data carriers. 

Where the money rolled: In the powerful Nittel-Hof in the north of Vienna, information is likely to have been exchanged for cash on several occasions. Officials are said to have removed files and data carriers from the apartment on a grand scale.

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

At Ott's main residence in Paternion (district of Villach-Land), a SINA laptop was found on a shelf in the study, while in his apartment in Vienna-Leopoldstadt a device was hidden in a kitchen skirting board. According to an incident report by "AG Fama", this laptop was still in its original packaging and had the Secnet banderole on it.

Sold to Russians?
It was previously known that Egisto Ott was suspected of having sold a SINA laptop to the Russian secret service. The device was allegedly handed over in Vienna on November 19, 2022 with false passports to men who were presumably part of the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB and brought to the FSB headquarters in Moscow via Istanbul.

The headquarters of the Russian secret service FSB in Moscow.

(Bild: AFP/Alexander NEMENOV)

The deal was allegedly arranged by former Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek, who is now said to be working for the Russian secret service. It is alleged that 20,000 euros were paid for the laptop in the fall of 2022, with Marsalek having the money transported from Berlin to Vienna by "laundry guys" (money laundering people, note), as revealed by chats Marsalek had with a Bulgarian businessman who is now in custody in London and is said to have led a multi-man espionage cell operating for Russia. According to the investigation file, the laptop transferred to Russia may have contained classified data from an EU state.

Search for further devices
It is unclear what was planned with the SINA laptops that have now been discovered and are being forensically examined. Ott is now said to have confessed that he knew of a total of five SINA laptops, one of which was "abroad, but not in Russia". One was in the possession of "one of his employees" and another "a journalist in Austria". Egisto Ott is presumed innocent.

Ott threatens to go on hunger strike
In addition to the laptop, intelligence documents and data carriers of official origin were also confiscated from the Carinthian address of the former employee of the Federal Office for State Protection and Counterterrorism (BVT). Ott was not prepared to disclose the access data to the electronic devices seized and is said to have repeatedly made derogatory and insulting remarks about the officers investigating him when he was arrested on March 29. According to a report in "Der Standard", he is also said to have threatened to go on hunger strike. 

Systematically spying on "target persons"
Ott is suspected of having systematically searched for "targets" for Russia together with his former superior at the BVT, the former head of the espionage department Martin Weiss, about whose whereabouts the Russian secret service would have liked to know. One of them was a rogue FSB agent who Ott spied on, for example by untruthfully pretending to a BVT chief inspector in July 2017 that he was conducting "undercover investigations in connection with planned extremist/terrorist disruptive actions at a major international conference" and having the ex-agent's fingerprints provided to him by the Russian secret service retrieved in order to find out his whereabouts. Ott is also said to have combed through airline passenger lists and hotel guest lists in order to track down the man in hiding.

Tracking device on the car of an ex-agent
In this context, it is particularly worrying that a tracking device was found under the mudguard of the ex-FSB agent's car on 28 December 2023 when the man's wife went to a garage to have a tire and oil change. It was a professional, high-quality GPS tracker, an autonomous satellite device for online monitoring of land, sea and air objects. The ex-FSB agent handed the device over to the Austrian authorities on 8 January and made it clear on this occasion that he assumed that he was still being tracked and spied on by the Russian secret service. Due to the threat situation, he decided to leave the country in south-eastern Europe, where he had last stayed with his family, at short notice.

Something similar had previously happened to another man who had fallen out of favor in Russia, whom Ott is also said to have spied on in 2017. A short time later, his driver had also discovered a tracking device attached to a vehicle, whereupon the man apparently wanted by Russia "feared for his life and the safety of his family", as stated in the investigation file.