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The key trick that exposed the federal rider spy could come from British intelligence. This was reported by the "Kleine Zeitung" in its Monday edition. It was so far explosive, "because they are British for years in a permanent quarrel with the Russian secret services," said Sunday in a statement.
According to the newspaper, a senior officer in the federal army said that Britain should deliberately have conveyed this information to the Austrians in order to keep the turquoise-blue federal government, which, much to the chagrin of many Western states, would follow from near the Kremlin,
Not an isolated case
In addition, the unmasked Bundesheerspion should not have been the only one to have sucked secret information from Austria to Russia. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight Against Terrorism (BVT) has also launched a case of espionage that could be linked to Russia. The case has been known internally since September and has been made public by the Addendum research platform. The investigation against O. BVT's collaborator is ongoing since November 2017. She was referred to as with the currently-detained army colonel belonging to a "friendly partners service".
"There is an act of blocking a BVT employee", confirmed last weekend a spokesman of the Vienna Attorney General's office at the Austrian press agency. However, she did not want to comment on the specific content of the preliminary proceedings pending before the Public Prosecutor's Office of Vienna, as regards the closed nature of the case. The fact that there is a case of potential spying in BAT was also confirmed last week by the Director General of Public Security, Michaela Kardeis, in a press release. In this regard, with regard to the temporary removal of the BVT from the Bern club's working groups, he stated that there was an "alleged case of espionage against a former employee of BAT in 2017" and that was the reason for the withdrawal.
In addition, Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl rejected the accusation of "mega-diplomacy" in a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov used this phrase in the context of alleged Austrian espionage. "The approach of the Austrian Federal Government is based on clear facts," Kneissl said. "These are penally important events that have made the intervention of the forces of order and the prompt information of the public indispensable," said the minister, according to a statement from his ministry in Lavrov.
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