A Russian spy was living in a “typical seaside hotel” on the English coast crammed full of electronic surveillance equipment, a court has heard.
Orlin Roussev boasted to his controller that he was becoming like the James Bond character “Q” as he prepared his spying “toys” for kidnap and surveillance operations across Europe.
He is said to have taken instructions from a handler called Jan Marsalek, who is wanted in connection with a £1.6bn tech fraud linked to a company called Wirecard.
Roussev, 46, a Bulgarian national, has pleaded guilty to running a spy ring on behalf of the Russians, but three other members of the group deny the charges.
The Old Bailey was told a “vast” amount of technical equipment for “intrusive surveillance” was found at Roussev’s address in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, which he described in messages as his “Indiana Jones warehouse”.
The Haydee guest house on Prince’s Road had 33 rooms according to Dan Pawson-Pounds, prosecuting.
Inside three of them was a “significant amount of IT and surveillance equipment”. It was stacked up in two storage rooms and an office used by Roussev, the court was told.
The jury heard that Operation Skirp seized 3,540 exhibits from a number of addresses, including 1,650 digital exhibits, and was shown two “IMSI grabbers” – a black metal box capable of capturing mobile phone numbers from a nearby area.
Both devices were described as “law enforcement grade” and could be used to intercept or disrupt targeted mobile phone communications and to identify an individual phone by their IMSI and IMEI numbers, in conjunction with a direction-finding unit.
The spies planned to use them outside a US military base in Stuttgart, Germany, to gather information from the phones of Ukrainian servicemen who were being trained to operate Patriot missile defence batteries, the prosecution said.
The information would have allowed them to track the servicemen back to Ukraine and identify where the missiles were fired from, but the plan was foiled when the men were arrested in February last year.
Read more on the trial:
Five suspected of spying for Russia charged, CPS says
Spies in love triangle to be used in ‘honeytrap’ across Europe
Spies plotted to kidnap Salisbury attack journalist
Gadgets with hidden cameras part of evidence
Other findings included pendant necklaces with hidden cameras, water bottles with mobile phone-linked video surveillance capability, a Pandora car key cloning device, and more traditional surveillance equipment such as night vision binoculars and mobile radios.
The spy ring’s members allegedly included Katrin Ivanova, 33, a lab assistant from Harrow, North London, Vanya Gaberova, 30, a beautician from Acton, West London, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, a painter and decorator from Enfield.
Roussev and Biser Dzhambazov – a 43-year-old man from London who is also an alleged member of the ring – have both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to collect information useful to an enemy.
Gaberova, Ivanova, and Ivanchev all deny the charges and the trial continues. All five are Bulgarian nationals with “settled status” in the UK.
Follow our channel and never miss an update.
More equipment – including a black cap with a concealed camera and a one-litre plastic Coke bottle with waterproof camera behind the label – was found in the lounge at a North London flat shared by Ivanova and Dzhambazov, the trial has heard.
The trial continues.
