By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – A group of Bulgarian nationals accused of spying for Russia targeted an investigative journalist with the Bellingcat news outlet and tried to lure him into a “honey trap” via Facebook, prosecutors told a London court on Monday.
Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, are accused of being part of a highly sophisticated spying network, run by a Russian agent named as Jan Marsalek, which targeted people including dissidents.
Prosecutors say the trio – along with two men, Orlin Roussev and Bizer Dzhambazov, who have admitted being part of a spying conspiracy – also carried out surveillance on a U.S. military base in Germany where Ukrainian forces were being trained.
The trio deny the accusations.
Their trial at London’s Old Bailey court continued on Monday, when prosecutor Alison Morgan said the group had conducted surveillance on Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian national who works for Bellingcat, in 2021.
Grozev was the lead investigator on Bellingcat’s reports about the 2018 poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England.
Morgan said Gaberova sent Grozev a friend request on Facebook as part of an attempt to gather information on him, which was directed by Marsalek and Roussev.
“Grozev seems hooked and in love with Vanya,” Roussev told Marsalek in a message shortly after Grozev accepted the Facebook friend request. “He’s started liking her pic posts. We can move slowly to a romance.”
HONEY TRAP
Marsalek expressed concern that Gaberova might “fall in love with him”, adding: “I had that problem before with a honey trap.”
Roussev replied: “You need strong, assertive and independent driven girls. Vanya is very, very assertive and strongly independent. True sexy bitch.”
The prosecutor also said Ivanova, Gaberova and Dzhambazov followed Grozev to a hotel in Valencia, with Gaberova taking a photo of him with Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgins.
Morgan said at the start of the trial last week that the group had been paid to carry out surveillance and to compile detailed reports.
They were acting under the direction of Roussev who in turn was receiving instructions from Marsalek, an Austrian national who used the false name of Rupert Ticz, Morgan said.
Marsalek is the former chief operating officer for collapsed payments company Wirecard and his current whereabouts are unknown.
Ivanova, Gaberova, and Ivanchev deny a charge of conspiracy to gather information useful to an enemy between August 2020 and February 2023. Ivanova also denies possessing false identity documents. Their trial is expected to last until February.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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