Unlock the Editor’s Digest totally free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.
A Bulgarian nationwide accused of spying for Russia was paid £18,600 from a checking account within the identify of collapsed funds firm Wirecard, in keeping with proof seen by a London court docket on Thursday.
Jurors on the Previous Bailey have been proven a sequence of funds in July 2019 from Wirecard Applied sciences Gmbh to an account belonging to an alias of Orlin Roussev, 46, who has pleaded responsible to conspiracy to spy.
Jan Marsalek, Wirecard’s former chief working officer, was the liaison between a gaggle of UK-based Bulgarians led by Roussev and the Russian intelligence providers, in keeping with British prosecutors.
The allegations got here within the trial of three of the Bulgarians — Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39 — who face prices of conspiracy to spy between August 2020 and their arrest in February 2023.
Investigators discovered a photograph of an Interpol “wished” poster for Marsalek on Gaberova’s cellphone, the trial has heard. Wirecard, a German firm, collapsed in June 2020.
Ivanova can also be accused of possessing false identification paperwork with improper intent. All three deny the fees. One other member of the group, Biser Dzhambazov, 43, has pleaded responsible to conspiracy to spy.
Telegram messages learn out in court docket this week confirmed Marsalek — who was utilizing the alias “Rupert Ticz” — instructing Roussev to conduct surveillance on Ukrainian troopers present process coaching at a US base in Germany, in addition to journalists and Russian dissidents who have been of curiosity to Moscow.
“This was a excessive degree, refined espionage operation,” prosecutor Alison Morgan KC instructed the jury on Thursday. She added that references to the FSB and GRU, each Russian intelligence companies, have been “peppered” all through Marsalek’s communications with Roussev.
In an announcement quoted in court docket, Matthew Collins, UK deputy nationwide safety adviser, mentioned Moscow was “more and more utilizing non-Russian nationals” to conduct covert actions on its behalf in Britain as a result of London had cracked down on Russian spies for the reason that tried assassinations of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018.
The jury additionally heard that the flat shared by Ivanova and Dzhambazov in Harrow, north-west London, was discovered to include giant numbers of counterfeit paperwork, which Morgan described as “high-quality forgeries”.
These included faux Bulgarian, French, Italian and Spanish identification paperwork, and counterfeit IDs for Marsalek, Morgan mentioned.
The trial continues.
