It has been known since 2022 that a kind of shadow secret service should have been set up in the Foreign Ministry under Karin Kneissl (2017 to 2019). The suspected Russian spy Egisto Ott and Johannes Peterlik, Secretary General in the Foreign Ministry at the time, played a leading role. In fact, Ott and Peterlik may have worked closely together. This emerges from investigation files available to the APA. These not only prove several requests from Peterlik for investigative queries. Ott was also supposed to get the diplomat a weapons passport. The investigation was stopped.
“Loophole” for gun passports
Peterlik became Secretary General to Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl (FPÖ) in 2017. After the Ibiza scandal, he was sent as ambassador to Indonesia, but was soon suspended. According to the accusation, the career diplomat was involved in transmitting the secret formula for the nerve agent Nowitschok to Wirecard board member Jan Marsalek. The formula was also found on Ott’s cell phone, according to the arrest warrant.
Investigations against Peterlik, which have now been discontinued, were also due to other favors that Ott is said to have done for him. The then Secretary General in the Foreign Ministry asked the suspected spy for help in issuing a weapons passport. Ott then contacted a high-ranking official in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism (LVT) in Vienna, who was looking for a “loophole”. According to the reasons for the dismissal from the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office, this would have been possible without intervention.
Allegations from the ÖVP
The investigation against Peterlik was also discontinued in another case: he had asked Ott to query the provider for a suppressed telephone number. The public prosecutor’s office states that Ott, who was already assigned to the security academy at the time, was not able to carry out any query in accordance with the law. In another case – Peterlik wanted to know whether a certain number was being monitored by the police – the investigators found that Ott had no opportunity to look into it.
Investigations against Peterlik for betraying secrets to Ott in connection with the freelance journalist Max Zirngast, who was imprisoned in Turkey at the time, were also discontinued in August 2022. At the time of the crime, the media coverage was already so extensive, the statement states, that “the accused cannot be proven to have had any intention to disclose or use the residence permit.”
The ÖVP recently raised allegations that Peterlik and Ott had worked on setting up a shadow secret service under Kneissl. According to the organizational chart, Ott was supposed to be in charge of “Department 4,” a coordination office. Peterlik should have been in charge. The FPÖ rejected the representations.
Although Peterlik most recently sat in an FPÖ-led department, the liberal general secretary Christian Hafenecker was “astonished” by the public prosecutor’s “gentle treatment of the ÖVP confidant” Peterlik. He previously worked for the ÖVP ministers Benita Ferrero-Wallner and Sophie Karmasin. The fact that Ott had no access to the requested data was also “remarkable” in view of the current allegations about his alleged skills and access.