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Five Bulgarian nationals appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday accused of spying for Russia.
An investigation by London police concluded that from August 2020 to February 2023 they collected information that, as stated in the case file, “could be useful to an enemy country.”
In the dock are Orlin Rusev, Bizer Dzhambazov, Katrin Ivanova, Ivan Stoyanov and Vanya Gaberova.
They were arrested by counter-terrorism police officers in February this year.
The group’s activities in Britain were allegedly led by 45-year-old Rusev.
According to available information, all of them were members of an operational spy cell of the Russian special services. Their tasks, in particular, included monitoring various objects.
According to the prosecution, the group passed on information collected both in Britain and other European countries to representatives of the Russian state.
Three of the accused – Rusev, Dzhambazov and Ivanova – lived in Norfolk. During the arrest, fake passports and identity cards from a number of European countries were found in their homes: Britain, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
Members of the group are also accused of organizing surveillance in Montenegro.
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Connection with Marsalek
All five defendants, who appeared in court via video link from four different prisons, refused to plead guilty or not guilty and, other than confirming their names and dates of birth, remained silent.
In announcing the charges, prosecutor Catherine Selby said that “the operational spy center in this country [Великобритании]” – a small seaside hotel in Great Yarmouth, now closed, belonged to Rusev and served as his home address. It was from there that, according to the prosecutor, he organized and directed espionage operations in the UK, as well as other European countries.
It also turned out in court that Ivan Stoyanov competed in amateur mixed martial arts competitions in Britain, and was a famous sambo wrestler in his homeland of Bulgaria.
It was also stated in court that all five defendants were in conspiracy with a person known as Jan Marsalek, who is not involved in this case. Prosecutors claim that it was from Marsalek that Rusev received orders and instructions from abroad.
The operating director of Wirecard, Austrian Jan Marsalek, is suspected of involvement in the largest accounting fraud, as a result of which the company attributed to itself a non-existent 2 billion euros, and when the forgery was revealed and two of the company’s top managers were arrested, Marsalek went on the run.
He was initially reported to have been seen in the Philippines, but later it was reported that Marsalek, who was reported in the German press to have boasted of intelligence connections and the Novichok poison formula in meetings with London financiers, had traveled from Vienna to on a private plane to Belarus, and from there moved to Russia.
2023-09-26 17:26:32
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