Three Bulgarian nationals have been found guilty of spying on Russia at Old Bailey in London, in a trial that police described as one of the most important espionage cases to be brought to Britain in decades.
Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanhev, 39, were each convicted of a plot charge of spying on Friday.
Ivanova was also found guilty on charges of possession of false identity documents with improper intention after more than 30 hours of discussion by the jury.
Prosecutors had said that the trio was part of a spy ring operating between 2020 and 2023 under the direction of the former Wirecard Operating Officer Jan Marsalek, acting under the name Rupert Ticz.
Marsalek is believed to have been recruited by Russian intelligence in 2014, and fled to Moscow after the fraudulent activity of the payment group was exhibited in 2020.
The telegram messages shown in court suggested that Marsalek – who did not confront accusations himself – was giving Bulgarian groups in the name of Russian military intelligence and local intelligence agencies, GRO and FSB.
Marsalek submitted orders from his Russian bosses to the group’s leader, Orlin Roussev, 46, who managed his activities from his home in Great Yarmouth, the court told. Roussev and Biser Dzhambazov, 43, pleaded guilty to the plot to spy on the start of the trial. Ivan Stoyanov, 33, pleaded guilty to spying before trial.
In her concluding argument last month, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC told the jury that the ring was filling a “void” in “invalid intelligence” that Russia faces after a annoyed woman’s operation to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018 prompted the expulsion of Russian spiers around Europe.
Prior to the verdict, Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police SOG, SO15 terrorism, described the police operation to discover the spy ring as one of the biggest espionage investigations he had seen in more than two decades of terrorism.
“This was spying on an almost industrial scale on behalf of the Russian state,” he told reporters, describing the group as a “serious threat”.
Murphy added that when he was first informed about group activities, they looked like “something you expect to read in a spy novel”.
During the three-month trial, prosecutors told the jury that the defendants carried out supervision between 2021 and 2022 against a number of objectives, including journalists, dissidents and a US military base in Germany.
The court heard that Christo Grosev, a Bulgarian journalist for investigative exit Bellingcat, was attended and viewed in late 2021 by various members of the group in his home, on flights and a journalist conference.
Marsalek and Roussev discussed the theft of his laptop, hacking his internet connection, abduction or killing him, and infiltration of Bellingcat, according to telegram messages.
The supervision of Roman Dobrokhotov, the Insider editor, a Russian -centered media, took place in parallel. The ring used information obtained from Amadeus, a software used by the airline industry, to follow its movements across Europe and follow it on a flight from Budapest to Berlin.
Marsalek and Roussev also discussed the abduction of Dobrokhotov and his transportation to Moscow.
Two operations were carried out to “favor Curry” between Russia and Kazakhstan, prosecutors said.
In November 2021 Bergey Ryskaliyev, a former policy of Kazak who has been critical of the country’s links with Russia, collapsed at a residential address in Kensington and the Luxury One Hyde Park apartment complex.
The group also planned a fake flag protest outside the Kazaku embassy in Pall Mall.
At the end of 2022, Dzhambazov and Ivanova traveled to Patch Barracks, a US military base in Stuttgart, where Marsalek believed that Ukrainian troops were being trained to use surface weapons, the court heard.
Dzhambazov and Ivanova recorded images and videos of the perimeter and setting the security of the complex. Roussev and Marsalek discussed using a “IMSI catcher”, a device that can track cell phones and extract sensitive information such as passwords.
Finally, at the end of 2021 and early 2022 the decomposed group in Budva, an Adriatic tourist city in Montenegro, to spy on Russian dissident Kirill Kachur, who was appointed a foreign agent from Russia in 2023.
After renting a cottage adjacent to a property owned by a woman who was believed to be Kachur’s girlfriend, the group used Drone and other spyware to record her images and find it.
During the indictment, which went between the middle of 2020 and the beginning of 2023, the group had access to 221 different mobile phones, 258 hard disks, 33 audio recorders and 55 video recorders and almost 500 SIM cards, according to Murphy.
Ring members had 11 drones, 16 radio and 75 passports and identification documents in 55 different names. They also collected a trove of daily modified objects to hide supervision equipment including a rock, a pen, bottle of non -alcoholic beverages, watches and two “spy connections”.
Each of the defendants claimed to have been deceived by Roussev and Dzhambazov. Ivanova, the latter’s partner for 10 years, said she thought she was contributing to a Bellingcat -style website to expose corrupt journalists.
Gaberova-who also had an 18-month relationship with Dzhambazov-and Ivanhev, the ex-boyfriend of Gaberova, said they believed they were helping Interpol, whom Dzhambazov claimed to work falsely.
Frank Ferguson, head of the special division of crime and against the terrorism of the crown prosecution service and against terrorism, on Friday, said that aiming for individuals in the UK fleeing persecution, as well as journalists who opposed the Russian regime, the group had “mined the message that the United Kingdom is a safe place for those people”.
“This extended activity also undermined the security and security of the UK; and there can be no doubt that each of the defendants knew exactly who they were spying on,” he added.
