LONDON (AP) — A Bulgarian man who was the ringleader of a Russian spy ring in the U.K. was sentenced Monday to more than 10 years in prison.
Orlin Roussev, 47, headed up a group of five fellow Bulgarians who prosecutors said put lives in danger as they carried out operations in the U.K., Germany Austria, Spain and Montenegro between 2020 and 2023 on behalf of Russian intelligence.
The group targeted reporters, diplomats and Ukrainian troops and discussed kidnapping or killing Kremlin opponents in what Cmdr. Dominic Murphy, counterterrorism chief at London’s Metropolitan Police, said was “industrial-scale espionage on behalf of Russia.”
Roussev worked for alleged Russian agent Jan Marsalek, an Austrian national who is wanted by Interpol for fraud and embezzlement after the 2020 collapse of German payment processing firm Wirecard, prosecutors said. His whereabouts are unknown.
Justice Nicholas Hilliard said the Roussev was involved in all six sophisticated operations and had a stash of phony identity documents that put his crime at the top of the scale.
Roussev was sentenced to 10 years and eight months for his guilty plea to espionage charges and having false identity documents.
Roussev was the first of the five to be sentenced in the Central Criminal Court.
His lieutenant, Biser Dzhambazov, 44, was sentenced to 10 years and 2 months for his plea to identical charges.
Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanov Ivanchev, 39, were convicted by a jury in March of conspiring to spy for an enemy state.
Ivanova was sentenced to 9 years and eight months.
Ivan Stoyanov, 33, a mixed martial arts fighter, admitted to spying for Russia.
The group living in England used code names from the movies, with Roussev calling himself Jackie Chan and Dzhambazov being dubbed Mad Max, or Jean-Claude Van Damme. Their underlings were dubbed “Minions” from the animated “Despicable Me” franchise.
But police said their fanciful pseudonyms masked a deadly serious group.
In one operation, members tried to lure a Bulgarian journalist who uncovered Moscow’s involvement in the 2018 Novichok poisoning of a former Russian spy in Salisbury, England, into a “honeytrap” romance with Gaberova.
The spies followed Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev from Vienna to a conference in Valencia, Spain, and the gang’s ringleaders discussed robbing and killing him, or kidnapping him and taking him to Russia.
“Learning only in retrospect that foreign agents have been monitoring my movements, communications and home, surveying my loved ones over an extended period — has been terrifying, disorientating and deeply destabilizing,” Grozev said in a statement read during the four-day sentencing hearing. “The consequences have not faded with time — they have fundamentally changed how I live my daily life and how I relate to the world around me.”
Roussev, who worked out of a former guesthouse in the English seaside resort town of Great Yarmouth, harbored a trove of spy equipment that police described as “Aladdin’s cave” when it was raided. They discovered loads of spy cameras, hidden in sunglasses, pens, neckties and cuddly toys that included a Minion. Technology used to jam wifi and GPS signals was found, along with eavesdropping devices and car trackers.
Dzhambazov, who worked for a medical courier company but claimed to be an Interpol police officer, was in a relationship with both the women — his laboratory assistant partner Ivanova and beautician Gaberova.
Gaberova, in turn, had ditched painter-decorator Ivanchev for Dzhambazov, who took her to Michelin-starred restaurants and stayed with her in a five-star hotel. When police moved in to arrest the suspects in February 2023, they found Dzhambazov naked in bed with Gaberova rather than at home with Ivanova.
Both women claimed during the trial that they had been deceived and manipulated by Dzhambazov.
Brian Melley, The Associated Press
