A hierarchical network of individuals constituted a Russian-directed spy ring, the Old Bailey heard during a three-month espionage trial. Directed from Moscow by a fugitive, it was led by a Bulgarian based in Great Yarmouth who, largely through a friend and deputy, directed the operations of the others. Here are those named in court.
Jan Marsalek, 44, the spymaster
The Austrian-born Russian agent had fled to Moscow in June 2020 after Wirecard, a German payments company he helped run, collapsed amid a near €2bn fraud. It was believed Marsalek had been secretly working for Russian military intelligence for a decade. One report said he had taken a new identity of an Orthodox priest, but the Old Bailey heard that from August 2020 to February 2023 he had been directing the activities of a spy ring of Bulgarians based in the UK through an old associate, Orlin Roussev. Police recovered 78,747 messages between Marsalek, who used the moniker Rupert Ticz, and Roussev. He directed operations against personal adversaries and enemies of the Russian state, who were often one and the same. Unlike the other members of the spy ring, Marsalek remains at large.
Orlin Roussev, 47, the ringleader
The leading British-based member of the spy network, Roussev directed operations around Europe from a rundown former guesthouse in the centre of Great Yarmouth but never travelled himself. A Bulgarian national who lived in the UK, he was found to have amassed what he described as an “Indiana Jones warehouse” of surveillance equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, plus a host of forged documents, including passports, when he was arrested in February 2023. He pleaded guilty to spying on behalf of Russia before the trial began and did not appear at the Old Bailey during the nine-week long case, though there were frequent references to him.
Biser Dzhambazov, 43, the sidekick
The medical courier from Harrow, north-west London had known fellow Bulgarian Roussev for many years and like him pleaded guilty to espionage before the trial began. Dzhambazov was Roussev’s friend and principal ally. He called himself “Van Dam,” after the Belgian martial artist, in their messages, while Roussev used the name “Jackie Chan”. Dzhambazov had been in a long relationship with the first defendant, Katrin Ivanova, but was also dating Vanya Gaberova for a year and a half. He told both women he had brain cancer, though he was not sick, and Gaberova that he worked for Interpol, though his badges and photo identification were fake.
Katrin Ivanova, 33, the ‘chief minion’
A lab technician who had known the older Dzhambazov since she was 17, she had come to the UK with him from Bulgaria in 2012. The two worked for the same company in Euston and lived together in a Harrow flat, where fake passports and surveillance cameras were recovered by police. Ivanova pleaded not guilty after she was accused by prosecutors of engaging in the hostile surveillance of Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist and Kremlin critic, and the reconnaissance of a US barracks in Stuttgart where Ukrainian soldiers were thought to be based. Her defence was that she had been manipulated by Dzhambazov. She said she knew nothing of his “parallel relationship” with Gaberova – and was forced to admit an affair of her own.
Vanya Gaberova, 30, the beautician
A beautician who had come to the UK at the end of the last decade, she was running her own salon in Acton at the time of her arrest. Gaberova met Dzhambazov as her relationship with the third defendant, Tihomir Ivanchev, was petering out. She was recruited by Dzhambazov on a trip to Valencia, where they stayed in a five-star hotel, at the tail end of what he said was an operation for Interpol. Prosecutors accused Gaberova of becoming involved in the monitoring of Grozev while knowing he was disliked by the Russian state, but she pleaded not guilty, arguing that Dzhambazov had repeatedly lied to her. She said he had told her falsely that Grozev was a “bad journalist” who was going to be exposed by Interpol.
Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, the ex-boyfriend
A painter and decorator who said his life “fucked up” after he met Gaberova. The two came to the UK together, and Ivanchev lent Gaberova £30,000 to help start her beauty salon, though the two broke up in the summer of 2021. Gaberova introduced him to her new boyfriend Dzhambazov, who told Ivanchev that he worked for Interpol and asked if he wanted to go on a “free holiday” doing some basic surveillance of Grozev and others. Ivanchev said in a police interview that after a while he realised “there is something dodgy” in what he was being asked to do, but prosecutors accused him of liaising with a Russian spy on another surveillance operation in Montenegro.
