Explosive suspicion

Ex-FPÖ employee allegedly bought Ott’s laptops

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

In the espionage affair surrounding former BVT employee Egisto Ott, investigators seized two SINA laptops from him during house searches at the end of March. It has now become known that these laptops were originally purchased from the company of a former employee of the Freedom Party General Secretariat. 

Ott had stated in his interrogation that the laptops had been purchased by an "investigative journalist". This is likely to have been a former FPÖ press spokesperson and blog operator, as reported by "profil".

"There is nothing more to be found here"
The former FPÖ employee himself wrote on Twitter this week (X): "There is nothing more to be found here. After several months of hard work, we (...) digitally shredded around 750 GB of data, data leaks and documents, physically destroyed mountains of files and digitally moved the backups abroad." The authorities tracked him down by investigating the manufacturer of the laptops. Another laptop is said to have been sent to Moscow via Jan Marsalek.

Large-scale espionage for Russia
Ott has been under investigation by the Vienna prosecution authority since 2017 on charges including abuse of office, secret intelligence to the detriment of Austria and violation of official secrecy. The arrest was preceded by recent information that Ott had allegedly handed over the cell phone contents of top officials to Russian spies.

Ott is said to have "systematically" supplied the Russian secret service with secret, strictly confidential facts and findings from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as well as personal data from police databases.