Introducing Hot Money Season 3: Agent of Chaos

When reporter Sam Jones asks questions about disgraced financial executive Jan Marsalek, he discovers a world of warlords, espionage, and disinformation.

Coming June 10 from Pushkin Industries and The Financial Times

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Jan Marcelek was a model of modern German corporate success.
It seemed so damned simple for him, young, wealthy, charismatic.
Did it occur to you that he'd charmed you in
any way? Yes? It did that he was a charming man.
It turned out he was also a fraudster. Where does

(00:24):
the money come from? That was something that I always
was questioning myself. Someone living another life. His secret office
was a lesson for I verund meters down the road.
I'm Sam Jones and I'm the European security correspondent for
the Financial Times. In twenty twenty, my colleagues at the

(00:46):
FT exposed German financial payments giant WAKAD as a huge
corporate con But it was also the start of a
strange and more elusive tale. One cannot work with Macelech.
He has too close to the rast.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story.
Because this ties together the cold or alms the new one.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
For the last year, I've been pulling together threads from
the wreckage Jan Marcelect left behind. He disappeared just hours
before Wakad's final moments and took plundered millions with him.
I've met people who were drawn into his world. I
envied Ian so much, only for their lives to be
turned upside down.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
You do start to.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Worry what you've sort of brought down on your family.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
I don't know if they've followed me to my home.
Certain things in my life since then have done terribly wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Then I think this can't be a coincidence. I've traced
Marcelet's path from glamorous parties along the Courtezieu with his
mysterious Russian lover, to the front lines of the War
on Terror, snapping selfies with Russian mercenaries in Syria and
Libya of conspiracies aimed at furthering the power of the

(02:03):
far right. He definitely has a view that he's operating
with complete freedom to do whatever he likes. I've tried
to understand why mars electrose this path. I think the
biggest tragedy of Jan Marsalek is.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
That he didn't need to be what he turned out
to be.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
What it's all for, I.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Would say that we are actually at the doorstep of
a new ideological war, and people are choosing their sides in.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
This struggle, and who he really is.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I often ask myself, now, did I know the true
Yan at all?

Speaker 1 (02:45):
This is a story about the underside of the law
abiding world that most of us imagine. We live in,
a space carved out by crime and corruption, a world
some people find irresistible. It all began with an attempt
to catch a white collar fraudster, but it ended up
exposing something more sinister espionage from the Financial Times and

(03:09):
Pushkin Industries Hot Money Season three, Agent of Chaos, coming
June tenth. Listen to Hot Money Agent of Chaos wherever
you get your podcasts. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to listen

(03:30):
to Hot Money Agent of Chaos add free. As a
Pushkin Plus subscriber, you'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks,
and binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find
Pushkin Plus on the Hot Money Show page on Apple Podcasts,
or at pushkin, dot fm, slash plus.