A three-story apartment building in Voula with a well-maintained garden and gypsum finish in the pilot house is not eye-catching. There, after 2016, he bought one of at least two properties owned in Attica by Alexander, a 39-year-old Russian native, Greek citizen and permanent resident of Vienna.

It was March 24, 2022, when 15 armed members of the Austrian counter-terrorism unit Cobra broke into Alexander’s house in a suburb north of Vienna, over the Danube River. During the raid, anti-surveillance equipment, bed bug and hidden camera detectors, body armor, mobile phones, laptops and tablets were seized. In total, they looked at ten million electronic records, while he was allegedly interrogated for eight hours. The investigation remained classified until, on December 19, Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner publicly congratulated his country’s intelligence services for what he called “the identification of a Russian spy.” In a report from the Austrian authorities, Alexander is mentioned as a Greek of Russian origin, the son of a former Russian agent who served under diplomatic cover in Germany and Austria.

According to Austrian intelligence DSN, Alexander allegedly received special military training in Russia, while there are suspicions that he transmitted information to Moscow about Austrian foreign policy, security issues, as well as the climate that prevailed in Europe during the preparation of a military invasion of Ukraine. “In our investigation, we cooperated with various foreign authorities,” the Austrian Ministry of the Interior answered question “K”, adding that they could not share more detailed information. The Austrian authorities presented the 39-year-old as unemployed and receiving benefits, but between 2018 and 2022 he managed to make 65 trips to other European countries, as well as to Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Georgia. At the same time, he bought properties in Vienna, Russia and Greece. “K” found traces of him in Athens and represents unknown aspects of his history.

Alexandros was born in 1983 in Moscow and grew up in Austria. His parents, like his wife, are citizens of Russia. It is not yet clear exactly when and how he received Greek citizenship. According to one version, this happened in the early 1990s, but a search by the letter “K” in newspapers since 1992, where decisions on granting Greek citizenship are published, did not find anything related to his name. He has a Greek passport and ID card, which were reportedly issued two decades ago. He speaks fluent German, relatively good Greek, and poor English. Internet searches for “K” turned up no signs of his digital presence on any popular social networks.

In 2016, Alexandros made what is likely his first real estate purchase in Greece, an old building in Neo Kosmos, for which he reportedly paid €400,000 from a bank account in his own name rather than through offshore companies. He has renovated it and is reportedly leasing it to a management company. This was followed by the purchase of a small apartment in an old tenement house in Voula, for which he reportedly paid around 150,000 euros. His connection with this property was confirmed by the autopsy of the corpse of “K”. Similar steps have been taken in other countries, such as Georgia. According to information, in the last five years he has also been buying and selling real estate in Austria. It is also said that he is the owner of a business in Russia, which, however, is not related to real estate.

In March, 15 armored men from the Austrian Anti-Terrorist Service broke into his house and found compromising evidence.

After a Cobra Special Squad ransacked his home last March, Alexander traveled to Greece without incident as he was not prosecuted and did not appear to be subject to restrictive conditions. When he returned to Vienna, he was reportedly called in for further explanations along with his lawyer, and recently reportedly testified again for five hours before a statement from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior was released. In Greece, the National Intelligence Service as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were informed of the matter. However, no court document or other request for assistance was sent to the Greek authorities. He was allegedly subjected to a discretionary surveillance measure in order to have a picture of his movements within the Schengen area. The report, compiled by the Austrian secret services, was submitted to the Vienna prosecutor’s office on December 15 for a decision to open a criminal case against him.

These days, the historian Siegfried Baer, ​​founder of the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security at the University of Graz, commented on the case of the 39-year-old Greek at the invitation of his country’s media. “Whenever the phone rings, I know some new spy story will come up,” he says to K. Alexander’s case arouses his interest for two reasons: on the one hand, because in such cases it was not common for someone to take Russian and other citizenships, and on the other hand, because of the status of an agent, which his father also supposedly had.

He points out that similar stories have occupied the Austrian capital for decades. He talks about the channels of communication that the Soviets established after World War II and points out that the Central European country was suited for such activities because of its proximity to the Iron Curtain. Perhaps not coincidentally, in July 2010, Austria was chosen to host the largest US-Russian spy swap since the end of the Cold War. Among them at the time was former agent Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned eight years later in Salisbury, in the south of England.

Baer insists on the fact that it took several months after the raid on Alexander’s house before the Austrian Ministry of the Interior made official statements. He believes that the relatively recent restructuring of the country’s intelligence services could have played a role. “Perhaps they wanted to show that they had recovered and found an important case,” he notes. The terrorist attack in Vienna in November 2020, with four dead and more than 20 injured, was the latest reason for the transformation of the country’s intelligence services. In December 2021, the BVT Constitution Protection and Counter Terrorism Service gave way to the newly formed DSN.

Regarding the possibility of prosecution of the 39-year-old Greek, Beer explains that it is expected to be weighed whether and to what extent he had access to classified information and whether he intended to harm Austrian interests.