Overview
- A Vienna criminal court on May 20 found former intelligence officer Egisto Ott guilty of espionage and related offences and sentenced him to four years and one month in prison; Ott has appealed.
- Judges convicted Ott of misuse of office, bribery and breach of trust in addition to spying for Russia, citing unauthorised searches of police and other European databases and the transfer of sensitive material.
- Prosecutors say Ott handed over state work phones and an encrypted SINA‑S laptop used for secure communications and that his database queries exposed thousands of contacts and put refugees, journalists and defectors at risk.
- Austrian authorities say Ott acted at the direction of fugitive ex‑Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek, received about €80,000 for his work, and that the case relied on evidence supplied by an unnamed western intelligence partner and testimony from a British witness.
- The ruling has prompted Vienna to push for tougher espionage laws to criminalise targeting of the EU and international organisations and is likely to trigger security reviews of sensitive hardware and of how allied services share counter‑espionage evidence.