The court will investigate the involvement of five people in conducting espionage and spying for Russia.
Katrin Ivanova, Vanya Gaberova, Ivan Stoyanov, Bizer Dzhambazov, and Orlin Roussev will come in front of the court of Westminster Magistrates on Tuesday, 26 September 2023. All these individuals are Bulgarian nationals, and the UK authorities accuse them because it is a conspiracy; they were gathering information that could benefit the enemy. They conducted these activities for two and a half years, from August 2020 to February 2023. The Metropolitan Police initiated the investigation, and now the matter is in court.
According to police reports, these individuals have been involved in surveilling the targets they were assigned. They were engaged in these spying activities because they worked for an operational spy cell under some Russian security services departments. Moreover, these people are involved in some active operations the Russian agencies planned in the UK and Europe. Furthermore, they collected information in the UK and sent it to the Russian state.
For example, Mr Roussev, 45, is facing charges that he has been working as a link between the operations running in the UK and those receiving the intelligence reports. When the agencies traced the locations of Roussev in London and Norfolk, they found Ms Ivanova, 31, and Mr Dzhambazov, 41. They all had fake passports and other identity documents from France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Bulgaria, and the UK. Some documents were made by Mr Roussev, according to the reports. It means he is also involved in forging documents.
According to the agencies, the involvement of these individuals in a surveillance operation conducted in Montenegro is also traced. In this involvement, they created tempered documents to present them as journalists. In one of these documents, Miss Ivanova was also found. These people have been living in the UK for years. One of them is Ms Gaerova, 29. She is a businesswoman, an award-winning beautician, and runs a “Pretty Woman” brand. She has also been a judge in an eyelash competition.
