British police have arrested five people, including at least three Bulgarian nationals, believed to have been living undercover in the U.K. while working for Russian intelligence.
www.wsj.com
LONDON—British police have arrested five people, including at least three Bulgarian nationals, believed to have been living undercover in the U.K. while working for Russian intelligence, the latest in a series of arrests across Western countries of
alleged Russian agents posing as seemingly ordinary people.
Three men and two women were arrested in early February on suspicion of violating the U.K.’s Official Secrets Act 1911, which criminalizes espionage, the Metropolitan Police said Tuesday. The five people were released on bail and are due to appear in court in September, the Met said.
Three of the five—identified by the Met as Orlin Roussev, 45 years old, Biser Dzambazov, 42, and Katrin Ivanova, 31—were also charged with possession of false identity documents with improper intention, the Met said.
The BBC, which first reported the arrests, said the three are Bulgarian nationals believed to be working for Russian intelligence. It said they were caught with forged passports and documents from the U.K., Bulgaria, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece and the Czech Republic.
Two U.K. government officials confirmed that report to The Wall Street Journal.
There have been a string of similar arrests of deep-cover Russian spies in recent months across a range of countries,
often posing as South Americans but living in European countries.