Espionage (1): The Austria connection of the news dealer

In the so-called state affair concerning house searches and suspensions in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), the German private agent Christina Wilkening also appears. What role did the currently imprisoned informant, who is charged with bribery, play as a source for police and intelligence services? And why did the lady, who went by the codename "Nina" during her time at the Stasi, offer her services repeatedly to Austrian major clients - from OMV to the Vienna Insurance Group, from Dmitry Firtash to the immediate circle of Alfred Gusebauer? ADDENDUM delves into the intelligence world.

At the end of the day, the story of the so-called state affair will be different. And it will only be marginally related to the current narrative surrounding the investigations in the Ministry of the Interior and its associated Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism, BVT. Perhaps a former minister will still emerge, who wanted to arrange an arms deal with a former Soviet republic. Perhaps the details of an oil deal that not only do not suit a Western European rule of law, but also violated regulations will be uncovered. And probably a top executive from the business sector, who made recordings on dozens of dubious deals, primarily in autocratic states, will question in his retirement why he did not retire earlier.

Codename Nina

In the reporting on perceived grievances and malpractices at BVT since autumn 2017, leading to a parliamentary investigation, one name is almost completely left out, not even approached: The role of Christina Wilkening, 71, as of April 2018 in custody, who not only served in Vienna for BVT, the Federal Criminal Police Office, and the Military Intelligence Service, but also as a source of intelligence for all sorts of private agents officially posing as management consultants relaxing in cigar lounges. "Nina," as Wilkening called herself since her time as an Informal Collaborator - IM - of the Ministry for State Security - Stasi - in the GDR regime, has been active in Austria since the 1990s. Indirectly, through intermediaries, for OMV, the Vienna Insurance Group, and a gaming company. For Dmitry Firtash, a confidant of former Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, the lawyer Gabriel Lansky, and for Johann Pleininger, whose remarkable rise to the board of the Austrian oil giant OMV was undoubtedly also partially due to the skill of the busy informant.

What can Ms. Wilkening do? How did the lady monetize her Stasi past? When did she begin to cross boundaries, for example by paying a police officer from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for the purpose of gathering information - he was convicted for it - and also cooperating with a BVT inspector from Vienna?

Journalist - and Stasi Informant

It all began long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the 1980s, when Christina Wilkening was a journalist in the German Democratic Republic - and an informant for the regime, a distinction that was probably not so clear-cut back then. After reunification, Wilkening, as an author, openly addressed the topic of the Stasi in two books ("State within a State" and "I wanted clarity: Diary of an Investigation"), while also standing out as an investigator - and filmmaker around the mysterious death of Uwe Barschel, who died under still unexplained circumstances in a bathtub at the luxurious Geneva hotel Beau Rivage. Notable was Wilkening's good connections to Eastern espionage. Several times during questioning as a witness in the Barschel case, she presented intelligence documents from the Stasi to the investigators, documents they did not have official access to at the time.

It is her special connections that make her interesting to intelligence services. But at the same time, they prevent her from having a future in journalism when her Stasi past is widely mediatized in Germany, particularly by "Der Spiegel."

Vienna Revisited

Wilkening's film research for MDR and ORF led her to Vienna in the early 1990s, to a company that served as a money laundering machine for rapidly enriched Eastern traders. Over time, she found a number of business partners here through whom she could secure high-profile non-journalistic assignments: assignments that more closely resembled those of a secret agent.

Her immediate business partners in the years before her arrest in 2016 were private security consultants and lawyers who, in turn, were contractors for corporations or wealthy individuals. “Nina” traveled to the city once a month, sometimes less, sometimes more. This was her modus operandi until the end of her dubious career, when in the spring of 2016, the police knocked on her door - and not just hers.

Text & Graphics: Addendum

Key Player:Uwe Barschel, Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein 1982 - 1987

Born in 1944, CDU politician Uwe Barschel was Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein from 1982 to 1987. Shortly before the 1987 election, the news magazine Der Spiegel revealed that Barschel and his media advisor had initiated a slander campaign against the SPD challenger Björn Engholm. As a result, the CDU lost its majority in the election, and Barschel resigned. On October 11, 1987, a day before Barschel was to testify before a parliamentary committee in his hometown, he was found dead in the bathtub of his room at the Hotel Beau Rivage in Geneva by Stern journalists. Officially, it was declared a suicide. Whether this corresponded to the facts remains unresolved to this day.

Addendum Article Series SPYING: 

Introduction on SPARTANAT: A Secret Agent in the Service of Corporations and her Trail to BVT

Part 1: The Austria Connection of the Informant

Part 2: They Were in the Swamp in Romania

Part 3: How the 'Nina' System Was Uncovered

Part 4: Spy Thriller around Oil Company: Justice Investigates the Brigadier

Part 5: The Female Agent, the Russian Politician, and his Lawyer

Part 6: Spy Thriller: New Lead to the OMV Deputy Chief

More to come …

This article was first published on ADDENDUM.

ADDENDUM online: www.addendum.org