The leader of a Bulgarian espionage ring that operated under the direction of Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek has been sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison for spying for Russia.
Handing down the sentence at the Old Bailey on Monday, Justice Nicholas Hilliard said Orlin Roussev “knew about the scale of the conspiracy” and was “motivated by the prospect of very significant financial reward”.
Roussev provided Russia with information about the whereabouts of people it regarded as enemies, resulting in a “very obvious and very serious” risk of harm to those individuals, the judge added. The maximum term for a espionage offences is 14 years.
The spy ring was found to have carried out surveillance on reporters and Russian dissidents, and planned an operation targeting Ukrainian troops, in a series of activities between 2020 and 2023 across the UK, Austria, Germany, Spain, Hungary and Montenegro.
Roussev’s closest associate, Biser Dzhambazov, was given 10 years and two months for his role in managing a team he called the “Minions”, comprising his partner Katrin Ivanova, his girlfriend Vanya Gaberova, and Gaberova’s ex-boyfriend Tihomir Ivanchev.
Ivanova received a sentence of nine years and eight months, Gaberova six years and eight months, and Ivanchev eight years. Ivan Stoyanov, the final member of the group, was sentenced to five years.
All six were Bulgarian nationals who had settled in the UK, and so will be liable for deportation after their jail terms are served, Justice Hilliard said.
Responding to the sentencing Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism unit, said the jail terms reflected the significant threat posed by the group.
Since the expulsion of Russian diplomats and spies from across the UK and Europe, Moscow has increasingly been forced to recruit non-Russians to conduct covert activity on its behalf.
“This case is a clear example of the increasing amount of state threat casework we are dealing with in the UK,” Murphy said. “It also highlights a relatively new phenomenon whereby espionage is being ‘outsourced’ by certain states.”
Marsalek, Wirecard’s former chief operating officer who is subject to an Interpol red notice, did not face charges himself but was named in the indictment as a Russian agent acting under the alias Rupert Ticz.
Telegram messages shown in court indicate that Marsalek fled to Russia after the payments group’s €1.9bn fraud was exposed in 2020, and subsequently handed down assignments to Roussev on behalf of Moscow’s military and domestic intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB.
Marsalek’s messages used in evidence suggest he was working as a freelance fixer for the Russians, devising espionage operations against high-profile targets and weapons procurement schemes to assist the war in Ukraine. Five months after the full-scale invasion, he sent Roussev a selfie dressed in a pro-Russian military uniform, marked with a ‘Z’ motif.
The spy ring targeted a number of Kremlin dissidents, including Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, Russian journalist Roman Dobrokhotov, and an exiled former member of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Kirill Kachur.
They also planned to surveil Ukrainian soldiers at a US military base in Stuttgart, where Marsalek believed the troops were training to use a Patriot surface-to-air missile defence system.
Roussev and his associate Dzhambazov pleaded guilty to espionage charges; Stoyanov also admitted to spying ahead of the trial. Ivanova, Gaberova, and Ivanchev were convicted of conspiracy to spy by a jury in March following court proceedings lasting more than three months.
Ivanova and Gaberova claimed during the trial that they had been lied to and manipulated by Dzhambazov, who was in a relationship with both women. The court heard he had told each of them he had a brain tumour to explain his absences while he was with the other.
Ivanova said under questioning that she thought the surveillance activities she had undertaken were on behalf of a Bellingcat-style website to expose corrupt journalists. Gaberova, meanwhile, told the jury she believed Dzhambazov was working for Interpol and that she was assisting legitimate police activities.
Roussev, who directed the group’s operations from his home in Great Yarmouth, amassed a trove of espionage equipment including listening devices, GPS trackers, radio jammers and disguises for use in the group’s operations.
His residence took over a week to search and yielded nearly 2,000 exhibits. He called this his “Indiana Jones warehouse” and compared himself to “Q”, James Bond’s tech mastermind, the court heard during the trial.
Earlier in the sentencing hearing, Mark Summers KC, representing Roussev, said his client was motivated only by money and denied firmly that he had any ideological affiliation with Russia.
“Nothing in the evidence reveals him as an anti-UK or anti-western ideologue,” Summers told the judge. “That’s not who he is. He’s prepared to work for whomever pays for him to do so.”
Roussev, who was arrested in February 2023, also poured scorn on the notion that he was acting as an agent for Moscow.
“I will be thrilled to see how . . . on God’s earth there is a connection between me and Russia or any other state because I haven’t been a spy or a government agency employed for a state or state,” he said in his first police interview. “No James Bond . . . activity on my end, I guarantee you.”
