Austria says it is considering stripping fugitive Marsalek of citizenship

VIENNA (Reuters) -Austria is looking into stripping fugitive ex-Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek of his citizenship after reports that he is living in Russia, spied for Moscow and joined Russian forces in Ukraine, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.

Marsalek, 45, has been on the run since soon after German payments firm Wirecard collapsed in 2020 owing creditors nearly $4 billion. As the company's chief operating officer at the time, he was named as a key suspect in Germany's biggest post-war fraud, but police have been unable to hunt him down.

At the trial in London of three Bulgarians who were found guilty of espionage for Russia in March, police and prosecutors said Marsalek had run their spy unit.

Joint reporting by media including Germany's Der Spiegel, investigative outlet The Insider and Austria's Der Standard published in September found Marsalek was living in Moscow, probably working for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) intelligence agency and had travelled to Ukraine with Russian special forces.

"Media reports have been published in recent days and weeks concerning Jan Marsalek, his stay in Russia and his activities that require that an application to revoke his Austrian citizenship be looked into meticulously and comprehensively," Austria's interior ministry said in a statement.

It did not specify what media reports it was referring to.

Being a fugitive, Marsalek is not reachable and is not known to have a lawyer in Austria. A lawyer who represented him in Germany did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While citizenship is the responsibility of Austria's states rather than the federal government, the interior ministry can request that a person be stripped of theirs in certain cases after a thorough assessment carried out jointly with the main domestic intelligence agency, the statement said.

Those cases include fighting for a foreign army, spying and being convicted of certain terrorism-related offences, it added. Austrian law also stipulates that anyone who acquires another nationality loses their Austrian citizenship unless they obtained prior approval to keep it, the statement said.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by Mark Heinrich)