LONDON – Six Bulgarians, members of a sophisticated spy network dubbed “The Minions”, will appear in a London court on Wednesday facing up to 14 years in prison for spying for Russia.
The four men and two women will be sentenced on charges of conspiracy to spy at Russia’s behest following hearings at London’s Old Bailey court.
The six-person cell targeted journalists and a Kazakh former politician, and plotted to kidnap and honeytrap targets, tracking them in an almost three-year operation across several European cities.
It was “industrial-scale espionage on behalf of Russia”, Metropolitan police counter-terrorism Chief Commander Dominic Murphy said in March.
“This is one of the largest and most complex examples of a group working for a foreign state” ever uncovered in the UK, Murphy added.
Ringleader Orlin Roussev, 47, along with his second-in-command Bizer Dzhambazov, 43, and Ivan Stoyanov, 32, had pleaded guilty to spying.
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.
The espionage took place between August 2020 and February 2023, the court heard.
