site.btaBulgarian Nationals Charged for Being Part of Russian Spying Ring in UK

Two Bulgarian nationals have admitted in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales to being part of a Russian spying ring operating from Britain led by Jan Marsalek, the fugitive former chief operating officer of Wirecard, The Financial Times reported on Friday.

Orlin Roussev, 46, and Biser Dzhambazov, 43, worked with Marsalek, operating under the alias Rupert Ticz, to spy on targets of interest to Russia between 2020 and 2023. Both have pleaded guilty to espionage charges, Independent reported.

Another three Bulgarian nationals, Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanov Ivanchev, 39, have denied a charge of conspiracy to spy between August 30, 2020 and February 8, 2023. Ivanova has denied a second charge of possession of false identity documents with improper intention.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said the defendants were “sophisticated in their methodology” as they allegedly conducted surveillance. They obtained imagery and compiled detailed reports on their targets for which they were paid “significant amounts of money”. The Bulgarian citizens were tasked to spy on “prominent” individuals of obvious interest to Russia, often because they were dissidents who had fled their homeland for their own safety. Activities often involved surveillance operations, following people around and finding out where they were and then reporting back to the Russian state, the court heard. The spy ring also targeted significant locations, including an embassy and airbase in Germany, The Independent added.

Ms Morgan said there were six spying operations which involved “high level espionage with high levels of deceit” which were “extremely risky” for those involved.

They included getting close to their targets, filming them, and even envisaging direct contact by deploying the female defendants as a “honey trap”, as sexual bail to capture more information, jurors heard. The prosecutor told jurors that the operations were high risk and highly sophisticated.”

The first operation, between September and November 2021, targeted Bellingcat investigative journalist Christo Grozev whose work on Russian affairs included uncovering Russian links to the 2018 Salisbury attack and the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane in July 2014.

The Guardian daily pointed out that the award-winning Bulgarian journalist worked with the late Russian opposition dissident Alexei Navalny. Roussev and Marsalek allegedly discussed carrying out surveillance on Grozev, kidnapping him and taking him to Moscow, killing him and infiltrating Bellingcat, the British news outlet added.

Other objects of surveillance were UK-based Russian dissident and The Insider Founder Roman Dobrokhotov and Kazakhstan former politician Bergey Ryskaliyev who fled to the UK and was granted refugee status, as well as Russian lawyer Kirill Kachur, designated a “foreign agent” by Russia. The targeting of the political dissident in November 2021 would have helped cultivate relations between Russia and Kazakhstan, it was claimed.

The ring also allegedly planned to stage a demonstration outside the Kazakhstan Embassy to create the impression Russia had intelligence on those responsible to curry favour with the country’s intelligence services, The Financial Times said.

Another concerned Patch Barracks, a US military airbase in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2022. At the time, the defendants were said to have believed the base was being used to train Ukrainian soldiers, it was alleged.

The Guardian quotes the prosecutor as saying that none of the defendants engaged in this activity blindly and and they earned significant sums for what they were doing. The defendants allegedly worked with a number of other people who spied for Russia between 2020 and 2023 in London, Vienna, Valencia, Montenegro and Stuttgart.

Jurors were told that Dzhambazov, 43, was in a relationship with both Ivanova and Gaberova, and the latter was formerly involved with Ivanchev.

The trial is expected to go on until February next year, The Guardian reported.