LONDON: Six Bulgarians, members of a sophisticated spy network dubbed “The Minions,” were before court Wednesday for sentencing, facing up to 14 years in prison for spying for Russia.
The four men and two women either pled guilty or had been convicted of charges of conspiracy to spy at Russia’s behest with their sentences due to be handed down on Monday, after four days of hearings at London’s Old Bailey court.
Between 2020 to 2023, the six-person cell targeted journalists and a Kazakh former politician, and plotted to kidnap and honeytrap targets, tracking them across several European nations.
It was “industrial-scale espionage on behalf of Russia,” Metropolitan police counter-terrorism Chief Commander Dominic Murphy said in March.
Ringleader Orlin Roussev, 47, along with his second-in-command Bizer Dzhambazov, 43, and Ivan Stoyanov, 32, pled guilty to spying.
Barrister for the prosecution, Alison Morgan, on Wednesday laid out their roles in different operations, stressing they knew they were spying for Moscow.
London-based Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, were convicted in March after a trial lasting more than three months at the Old Bailey court.
Two of the group were in court on Wednesday, with the rest appearing by video link from their detention centers.
They had dubbed themselves “The Minions” after the cartoon yellow characters in the film “Despicable Me” who work for the dastardly Gru. The six also worked for the GRU, the acronym for the Russian military intelligence service.
The group launched operations in the UK as well as Austria, Spain, Germany and Montenegro.
But UK police were able to retrace six operations thanks to more than 100,000 messages found on Roussev’s Telegram account, which led police to his seaside home in the eastern town of Great Yarmouth.
Roussev received his instructions from Jan Marsalek, an Austrian fugitive who reportedly fled to Russia in 2020 after becoming wanted for fraud in Germany.
Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of payments firm Wirecard, was acting as a proxy for Russian intelligence services.
One operation targeted investigative journalist Christo Grozev, from the Bellingcat website, who uncovered Russian links to the 2018 Novichok chemical weapon attack in the English town of Salisbury and the downing of a Malaysia Airlines aeroplane four years earlier.
The group had planned “disruptive activity” at the Kazakh embassy in 2022, discussing a plan to spray the building with fake pig’s blood.
Roussev received more than 200,000 euros ($227,000) to fund his activities.
After the gang was busted in February 2023, police found huge amounts of spyware equipment in his home, including cameras and microphones hidden in ties, a stone, even a cuddly toy and a fizzy drinks bottle.
In messages to Marsalek, Roussev claimed “he will find the resources” to “keep the Russians happy” such as by kidnapping someone, Morgan said.
“The defendants were deployed to gather information about prominent individuals whose activities were of obvious interest to the Russian state,” she added.
Murphy said in March that police had found “really sophisticated devices — the sort of thing you would really expect to see in a spy novel.”
Journalist and UK-based dissident Roman Dobrokhotov, and former Kazakh politician Bergey Ryskaliev, granted refugee status in Britain, were also among their targets.
The group also kept the US military base Patch Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany, under surveillance, believing Ukrainian soldiers were being trained there in using the Patriot air defense system.
Ties between Britain and Russia have been strained since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
British security minister Dan Jarvis warned the convictions should “send a clear warning to those who wish to do the UK harm.”