Three Bulgarian nationals accused of spying for Russia have been found guilty of espionage charges in a trial that heard how they were involved in a string of plots around Europe directed by a fugitive based in Moscow.
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The three were convicted for being junior members of a spy ring that was ultimately directed by Jan Marsalek, an Austrian businessman who had fled to Russia in 2020 after a company he helped to run collapsed amid a €1.9bn (£1.6bn) fraud.
Marsalek directed the hostile surveillance of Christo Grozev – an investigative journalist who had helped implicate Russian spies in the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny – in Bulgaria, Austria and Spain. All three defendants were involved in the operation.
Officers seized 221 mobile phones, 495 sim cards, 258 hard drives, 33 audio recording devices, 55 surveillance cameras, 16 radios and 11 drones plus wifi eavesdroppers, electronic jammers and 75 fake passports and identity documents in 55 different names.
Quite the haul…
Impossible to rule not guilty on this and I hope these dudes spend the rest of their life imprisoned.
Grozev himself writes that there were a couple other people involved, but no matter if you divide between 3 or 7, it’s still a lot
What does the UK do to spies?
