The leader of a Bulgarian spy ring helped Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek organise an airlift of 200 personnel from Kabul for the CIA during the military retreat from Afghanistan in 2021, a court in London has heard.
The claim was made at the Old Bailey on Thursday by lawyers representing Orlin Roussev, the kingpin of a UK-based group accused of conducting espionage activities for Russia on an “industrial scale”.
Roussev, who located Bulgarian pilots for the flights, should be given credit for an operation to save American lives, lawyers argued. He appeared at a sentencing hearing alongside Biser Dzhambazov, an associate, and a third man, Ivan Stoyanov. All have pleaded guilty to spying for Russia.
The remaining members of the spy ring — Katrin Ivanova, Vanya Gaberova and Tihomir Ivanchev — were also present, having been convicted in March after a three-month trial at the Old Bailey.
All six are due to be sentenced on Monday.
At the time of the attempted Afghan operation Marsalek was in Russia, having fled Germany following the collapse of payments group Wirecard, where he was chief operating officer, in a €1.9bn fraud the previous year.
Once in exile, he is believed to have carried out espionage activities for both the FSB and the GRU, Russia’s domestic intelligence and military intelligence agencies, respectively, and tasked Roussev and his team of Bulgarians on Moscow’s behalf.
Marsalek and Roussev co-operated on a number of projects surveilling Russian targets, including journalists and dissidents, at the behest of Moscow.
But Mark Summers KC, Roussev’s barrister, cited Telegram messages suggesting the pair had also worked on a humanitarian mission in August 2021 at the request of the CIA, via US defence contractor Constellis, formerly known as Blackwater.
“Interesting request from our (sort of) friends at the CIA,” Marsalek wrote to Roussev on August 17. “They urgently need aircraft to fly out contractors from Afghanistan. Apparently all dodgy airlift companies in Russia and Turkey etc are already ‘sold out’ or refuse to fly because insurance won’t cover the loss of an aircraft. Do you know anyone who is a bit rogue and operates large-scale airplanes?”
Summers said Roussev had successfully arranged for Bulgarian pilots to airlift more than 200 personnel from Kabul on August 26.
At the time, Nato allies were conducting emergency evacuations of more than 120,000 troops and civilian staff from the Afghan capital as Taliban forces reasserted control of the country in the wake of the US military withdrawal.
However, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said the idea that Roussev was acting on a humanitarian basis at the direct request of the US government was “entirely incorrect”. Rather, she argued, the arrangement was made with Constellis, without any instruction from wider western allies.
“What Mr Roussev did was to see if they could profit from the terrible situation emerging out of Kabul . . . to see if they could make money out of it,” she said. There is no corroborating evidence that the airlift ever took place.
The Telegram messages do not explain the connection between Marsalek and Constellis. The company did not respond to a request for comment. The CIA has been approached for comment.
Marsalek and Roussev also used their contacts to conduct business ventures, and discussed a diamonds and weapons trade across Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to messages released in court.
In one conversation in June 2021, Roussev told Marsalek he was “dealing with the diamond guys in Africa”.
“My close contact who has been supplying them for 4 years . . . said . . . can you help me as they have no more cash but plenty of diamonds,” Roussev wrote, adding that he was planning a test run of the gemstones to Dubai for the following month.
Marsalek also aspired to work with contacts in China to design a rival to billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink communications satellite, and said he wanted to broker a partnership between the Russian state weapons company Rostec and Autel, the Chinese drone maker, to help arm Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.
The cache of Telegram messages between Roussev and Marsalek were found on devices by UK police when they raided the Bulgarian’s home in Great Yarmouth, in the east of England, in February 2023.
Their interactions shed light on Marsalek’s life in exile. In a message from May 2021, he said he was taking Russian lessons.
“I’m trying to improve my skills on a few fronts, languages is one of them. In my new role as an international fugitive, I must outperform James Bond,” he wrote.
In another message from February 2022, he told Roussev he was going to bed early after new plastic surgery to alter his appearance. “Had another cosmetic surgery, trying to look differently, and I am dead tired and my head hurts,” Marsalek complained.
Additional reporting by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
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