July 22, 2025 • 36 mins
A Marsalek-backed ring of operatives goes on trial in the UK for espionage. A treasure trove of text messages reveals their inner workings.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Pushkin previously on Hot Money.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The evidence that led to the raid was incredibly weak
and should have never have led to this raid to happen,
and we are still suffering from this raid.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
If you want to guess about how worse would an
intelligence asset like marceleg be, then you would say were very.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Worthy, very very valuable as a very h It's June
twenty twenty two. Jan Marcelek is in Moscow. It's been
almost two years since Waquard was exposed as a fraud,
and during these two years he's been in near constant
contact with one person in particular via the secure messaging
(01:04):
app Telegram. Right now, Marcelek is asking this person if
their regular career can pick up something very important for him,
something he has a hankering for dessert. We're going to
read out his messages for you.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
On a personal note, would he have time to drop
by the Saka shop to buy two cakes for me?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Marcelek is after one of the most famous inventions of
his home city, Sacha Torte chocolate cake. From the moment
he fled Europe. This person he's asking about the cake
has been around to help him life on the run.
Hasn't always been easy for Marceleg and this friend. He's
tried when he can to offer some reassurance. Keep your
(01:50):
chin up, he tells Marcelec. At least the Russian women
are beautiful, especially the blondes, and Marceleg replies, don't tell me.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I've been there, dangerous and admittedly I never fully recovered.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Is this a reference perhaps to Natalia's Lobina, the woman
on the yacht with Yan all those years ago in Nice.
For the most part, Marcelex seems in good spirits. He's
not one to take anything too seriously really, including being
a fugitive.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Being a wanted man helps to refine one's humor, it
might just become a little darker.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Marcelex's interlocutor has been far more than just a cake
courier and wingman. However, He's helped Marcelek establish himself in Russia,
sorted out his finances, organized his chaotic paperwork, and, perhaps
most importantly of all, he's also been a recruiter for Marcelek.
(02:47):
When Marcelec took heel as a fraudster and was outed
on the front page of the FT as a Russian asset,
you might have thought the jig would be up. But
it wasn't the only life that was over for Marcelek.
The one he permanently said goodbye to was his ordinary one,
his life in Munich, his corporate persona. Because these telegram
(03:09):
messages lay bare what Marcelec has continued to get up
to on behalf of the Russian state since he disappeared
from view, Marcelek has been running intelligence operations for Russia
across Europe, not just one kind of operation, a whole
range of endeavors, aggressive, seemingly unconnected, risky. In this episode,
(03:32):
for the first time in this series, we get to
hear from Marceilek directly in his own words, because these
messages between Marcelek, his friend and others ended up in
the hands of police when aspiring run by Marcelek was
caught and went on trial. I'm Sam Jones from the
(03:54):
Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is Hot Money, Season three,
Agent of Chaos, Episode seven, from Russia with Love. So
(04:15):
far this story has taken me to Vienna, to Munich,
to the south of France, to Tunis. But right now
here I am in Great Yarmouth. That's the sound of
a tiny little train, one of those little toy trains
going past that takes people from car parks to the seafront.
(04:38):
Great Yarmouth is a seaside resort on the Norfolk coast,
about three hours northeast of London. There's a beautiful sandy beach,
a pleasure pier and a fairground. The seafront is lined
with amusement arcades, a handful of grand buildings hint at
former prosperity, but there hasn't been much money in the
town for decades. It's the most in common grows place,
(05:00):
given what happened here and how significant it was. But
then again, in this kind of story, and in a
lot of spy fiction, two half forgotten, liminal places like
this are often at the heart of the matter. The
terraced streets off the seafront are full of guesthouses, but
(05:22):
many of these are boarded up. My producer Peggy and
I are here to see one guesthouse, in particular on
Prince's Road, the Heyd. There it is on the right.
It's the white and blue one. Oh here at the end, Yeah, yeah,
I see that. Windows are all shuttered, curtains all drawn.
Opposite the Heyd there's a pub, so we go in,
(05:44):
hoping to find someone who can maybe tell us more
about what happened here on Prince's Road on a cold
February morning in twenty twenty three, where A Scott is
the landlady. She had a ringside seat and.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
I turned up just before nine. Always get the doors
a and the straightaway. He saw the vade that there
is a big tent awning thing at the front of
the building.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Moira knows the rhythm of Great Yarmouth well and she's
pretty unflappable.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
First of all, I thought someone might have been murdered,
but I did think, well, there's no ambulances or anything,
and there's no police cars. And then I saw these
men or women or blest out with bile Klav was on.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Earlier that morning, squads of police and security officials arrived
at Number twenty seven, heavily armed and bashed the door
in body cam footage of one of the officers shows
police streaming into the building in the dawnlight through dim
rooms on the ground floor. At the back, they found
the person they were looking for. All In Russev, a
(06:53):
Bulgarian man. He looks terrified, his pupils are wide. The
police officer pushes him up against a wall and holds
him there, and in the background you can hear other
officers stamping up the stairs. He stammers to the officer
restraining him.
Speaker 6 (07:10):
I think there's the wrong place.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
The Hedi is no longer a guest house. It's Roussev's home,
and it's an Aladdin's cave, or perhaps more of a
poarder's layer. It's stacked high with boxes and clutter. One
of the rooms at the back seems to be Rousev's office.
It's packed full of what police later described as a
vast amount of computer and technical hardware.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
You've got a number.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
Of US fees on the desk that I can see here,
and to the right of the desk there are a
number of yes, yes, devices yours ah. I have for
purchased some on the eBay, and I'm a repairing many
of those.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Russev tells them he's running an IT repair business, but
that's not true. Most of this equipment it's for surveillance.
And it's only later when technical experts begin to pour
through the stuff they've seized that they find the treasure.
The telegram messages between Marcelek and his correspondent. Because all
(08:16):
An Russev is the cake courier, the fan of Russian blonds,
the man who has served as Marcelec's right hand during
his exile in Moscow. There are three hundred thousand telegram
messages in total. Eighty thousand alone are between Rusev and Marcelek,
and the rest are between Russev and the agents he'd
(08:37):
recruited to do Marcelex bidding. A year and nine months
after the raid in Great Yarmouth, the biggest public espionage
trial in modern UK history begins in London. All in
Rusev is in the dock and alongside him of five
others like him. They're all Bulgarian nationals who had been
granted the right to live permanently in the UK. The
(09:01):
Crown Prosecution Service accuses them of participating in a bewildering
array of high stakes espionage operations on British soil and
across Europe. My colleague Kelen Warrell had a front row
seat for it all. She spent years reporting on security
for the ft.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
It's very rare that they get to prosecute espionage, so
this is a huge deal.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
There's one notable absence in the courtroom, of course.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
I would say that Marzleck really was like a.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Sort of ghost that wanted this trial.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
He was clearly the organizing mind, and he was there,
you know, in black and white in these telegram messages.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
The messages between Marcelek and Russev are at the heart
of the prosecution's evidence. What's striking about them at first glance, though,
is that they're just like any other online conversation between
two admittedly slightly odd pals.
Speaker 8 (09:55):
I mean, one thing that's quite funny is he absolutely
loves this bizarre laughing wombat emoji, which he uses constantly
when Russev says something that sort of tickles him.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Now, I felt I needed to see this for myself,
and I can actually confirm that it isn't a wombat
but a raccoon. Helen says she's no zoologist anyway, you know.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
So they're sort of leering about women, and there are
often quite sort of long and tedious exchanges where they
pontificate about geopolitics in quite a sort of boring way.
You know, this is just the sort of message equivalent
to the manosphere.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
As in this choice piece of bravado from Marceilek.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Apologies, I was stuck between the mafia half of Russia's ambassadors,
the gru that doesn't naked girls, and some deep stek
guys whose names no one knows. They forced me to
drink a bottle of gin.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
The messages found that the Hadi also reveal a closeness
between the two men. At New Year's Marcelek effusively thanks
his friend for his work, and he signs off.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
From Russia with love.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
But far more importantly, the message is exposed to Marcelek
and Roussev had working for them, And the more I
learn about them, the more it makes me wonder how
it could be that Russia, an undoubted espionage superpower, has
ended up depending on people like this as its frontline
foot soldiers. Let me take you through the Orc chart.
(11:23):
Marcelek was at the top of the group giving orders
from Moscow in Great Yarmouth. Rusev was his number two,
Marcelex's ideas guy, his operations man, and Rusev then sets
things in motion via his man on the ground, his
troop leader, if you will, a man called Beza Zamberzov,
who he and Marcelex sometimes jokingly referred to as Jean
(11:47):
Claude van Dam. That's a reference to the nineteen nineties
movie star and Belgian beefcake. Zambazov lived in North London,
and it was there that he collected four underlings, who
he Rusev and Marcelect sometimes disparagingly referred to in their
messages as the Minions after the hapless yellow comic creatures
from the Despicable Me films. None of them were professional
(12:11):
intelligence operatives by day. They had perfectly ordinary jobs a driver,
a beautician, a decorator, a lab technician. Two of them
are women, Katrin Ivanova and Vanya Gaborova, and Zambazov had
rather complicated relationships with both of them.
Speaker 8 (12:30):
He and Vanya were naked while when they were arrested
in bed together, so this is him and his girlfriend
while his long term partner, Katrina was at work at
the time. And actually one of the more absurd things
that came out in the trial was that he pretended
to both women that he had brain cancer, so he
sort of was playing them off against each other slightly,
(12:51):
but he was also using this entirely fake diagnosis to
essentially inveiguel them into doing things that they didn't particularly
want to do on the basis that he was too
sick and that he was going through treatment. There was
a completely extraordinary evidence where he was shown speaking to
one of them on a sort of WhatsApp call and
(13:11):
he had wound toilet paper around his head to look
like a bandage, sort of as if he had just
recently had brain surgery.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
You might be thinking, as I am, that all of
this is beginning to sound a bit more farcical than threatening,
more Keystone Cops than Casino Royal. Because when I think
of what a good spiring probably needs to work, the
first things that spring to mind are skill, trust, and loyalty.
If you don't have those, then how can you hope
(13:45):
to stay secret. These guys had far too little appetite
for discretion. Sometimes they seem to be a bit carried
away by it all.
Speaker 8 (13:54):
I think at some points they were sort of surprised
by the excitement of it. There's a those that were
shown in evidence of Gabarova using her RayBan.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Spyglasses, sunglasses that have been equipped with a miniature camera.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
You know, she takes a photo of herself and a
hotel mirror sort of selfie in these glasses, and you
can see that there is an element of glamour here.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
But Here's the thing. Despite how amateurish the minions seem
to be, the plots Marcelek and Russev tasked them with
were frighteningly ambitious. In those thousands of telegram messages I
(14:39):
told you about, Marcelek and his minions discussed a multitude
of plots, some staid ideas in the ether, others were
put into action in the real world. I'm going to
tell you about three of them, which struck me because
they were operations on the front line of Russia's shadow
work to manipulate its allies, so chaos amongst its enemies
(15:03):
and silence its critics. To understand the first, you need
to know a little bit about Kazakhstan, the largest former
state of the USSR after Russia itself. Since independence, Kazakhstan
has had a close but complicated relationship with its neighbour
and former overlord. In twenty nineteen, when there was a
(15:25):
change in government, Russia began to worry about Kazakhstan drifting
out of its political orbit. Enter Yan Marcelek and dominions.
Russia's intelligence services brief Marcelek on their problem, and Marcelek
he gets to work engineering a potential solution with Russev
(15:46):
on the agenda, putting pressure on the new Kazakh president,
making things hard for him close to home, literally by
even looking at ways to target his family. What Marcelek
describes in a telegram message to Russev as creative.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Ways to make their lives miserable.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Marcelex spitballs some ideas, ways he can spread some nasty rumors.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Maybe a deep fake porn video of the son of
the president. Also a honey trap for the sun when
he is traveling in Europe could be a fun option.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It sounds like these ideas are going down well in
Moscow when Marcelek writes to Russev, the gru.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Guys are saying will be a drama in Kazakhstan if
we publish this.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
To be clear, because this isn't immediately obvious, the messages
show that the idea was to secretly create a problem
and then offer a phony solution to it, to set
up the president's son, and then offer the president fake
information about the people responsible, because the end goal here
was to actually strengthen diplomatic relationships between Russia and Kazakhstan
(16:51):
to make the new Kazakh government think it still needed
Russia's help, and that Russia was a beneficent ally thankfully
for the president's son. Marcelek and Roussev eventually settle on
a different course of action, an operation aimed at the
Kazakh Embassy in London, an operation that would actually require
(17:11):
a lot of careful planning for false trails to be
laid and a spectacular Kudae teatre at the end to
really grab the Kazakh government's attention on paper, a really
impressive piece of tradecraft with a lot required to pull
it off. At the center of the plan is a
protest outside the embassy, but not just any protest, something
(17:33):
really provocative. They discuss using drones to cover the embassy
with one hundred liters of pigs blood. They will make
it look like the pig's blood has been sprayed by
pro democracy protesters. This seems to get the green light
because Marcelek and Russev go on to agree a budget
before discussing details like how can the blood be diluted
(17:54):
so that it can be effectively sprayed and how can
it be mixed to glow at night. Russev seems to
be making progress. One of the minions has sent him
videos of vials of blood. In a message to Marsilek,
he tells him the quote Vampire Team are ready for tests.
Marcelek responds, bloody, glorious literally. Zamberzov and the Minions meanwhile
(18:19):
take it in terms to surveil the embassy to work
out the best plan of attack, including using a drone.
Rusev gets sent videos and photos from their covert reconnaissance.
It's not just this protest, though, There's a whole hinterground
that Marcelek, Rusev and the Minions have worked on building
out for the alleged perpetrators of this protest. They've drawn
(18:43):
up letters from this fake group to senior American and
European politicians urging them to sanction Kazakhstan. They've even booked
out a room in a pub in London under the
group's name to make it look like there was a
real planning meeting taking place for their activists. Rusev and
Zamberzov discussed creating a scene at the pub bar to
make sure witnesses remember something was going on. The Paulsin plan,
(19:07):
luckily for London's public hygiene officers, never goes ahead, but
the groundwork for the operation has been so successful that
it alone is actually already bearing fruit glorious.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
News from Kazakhstan. Kazakh intelligence is in a small panic
and wants our Russian friends to investigate who this new
group of activists is. They will provide money to bribe
the Russians to investigate.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
The thing is this operation. It's super high risk and
Marceelek seems to know it when he tells Rusev.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Don't want anyone outside a small circle in the GRU
to know about this Kazakh attack story.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Because obviously, if the Kazakh government ever found out it
was marcelect behind this and the GRU behind him deliberately
humiliating them in public and falsely claiming to be able
to help them. Well, I guess they'd be rather peeved.
I wonder how all this went down in the Kazakh
capital Astana when it came out at the trial. Then again,
(20:07):
when it comes to intelligence operations, one thing I've learned
is that Russia very rarely seems to factor in the
cost of public shame. In another operation, the minions were
being used to daub hate symbols at various public locations
around Europe, including the Jewish Museum in Vienna.
Speaker 8 (20:22):
They put up material that looks as if it's associated
with the Azov Brigade, which is obviously this group of
fighters in Ukraine who are said to have some sort
of fascist or Nazi ideology, although obviously that is entirely
debatable and some people claim it's not the case at all,
But so they are very much amplifying the Kremlin's arguments
(20:46):
and their sort of propaganda.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The intent was to generate news stories that would support
Russia's justification for its invasion of Ukraine, the narrative that Ukraine,
Austria and Europe are turning fascist, which brings me to
an even more sensitive mission that the minions were tasked
with about a year after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine,
one which could actually help Russia on the battlefield. At
(21:14):
this point in the war, Russia was struggling and Ukraine
was pushing back. Marcelex sent russerv a message. He told
him he was likely to have a meeting tomorrow with
our friends.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Who have asked for help in Germany with mobile tracking.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Marcelek tells Russev that his friends, aka Russian military intelligence,
want to try and locate seventy Ukrainians who have arrived
in Germany for training at a US air base. Marcelek
thinks the Ukrainians are there to learn how to use
Patriot air defense systems, the missiles gifted to Ukraine by
NATO allies to help defend Ukrainian civilians from Russian bombing raids.
(21:51):
Marcelek asks, can we use.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
The mccatcher in Germany? We need to spy in Ukrainians
at a German military base.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Now you've probably never heard of an Imsey catcher, and
for good reason, because this is military grade technology worth
more than one hundred thousand pounds, and what it does
is hoover up cell phone data. It collects the individual
signatures and locations of devices near it. Rusev He's got
one at home. He's excited to put it to use.
(22:21):
It's just gathering dust, he tells Marslek in his quote
Indiana Jones garage.
Speaker 8 (22:29):
Now, you can't buy an Imsey device anywhere, you know,
through reputable means. So we don't know how he got
hold of this. And it wasn't just that he managed
to purchase it. He also then sort of retrofitted it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Rucev tells Marcelek he can hide the Imsey catcher in
his car.
Speaker 8 (22:49):
So he managed to sort of buy a second hand
Chrysler and he fitted the IMZY into the boot of
the chrysler and he wired it up with a red
button on the steering wheel that pretty much said, you know,
press here to activate the IMZ. So he was sort
of hutting together these different bits of hardware that he'd
managed to acquire.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
As the planning develops, Russev sets up a telegram group
chat to loop in the Minions. He writes that he
wants them to quote go on a tour in Germany
for one or two days. Russev wants Zambazov an Aminion
to do areki to maybe see if there's an apartment
they can rent near the base and a discrete spot
close to its fence where he can park his imsymobile.
(23:35):
The plan was to set up the imsycatcher there for
several weeks, to leave it running and to collect as
much cell phone data from people on the base as possible,
and then to give all this data to Russia so
that Russia would be able to locate these trained Ukrainians
and kill them. Now, if you were a military intelligence
(23:58):
officer from the GI I'm not sure you'd be able
to undertake this operation even with all the training and
skills in the world, because in recent years European intelligence
agencies have been doing all they can to track Russian
agents at work on the continent, and they're pretty good
at it. Hundreds of suspected Russian intelligence operatives have been expelled.
(24:23):
But if you're a Bulgarian beautician from London or a
mobile phone repair man from Great Yarmouth, who will be
paying attention when you drive across a border or end
up renting an Airbnb in a small town in Germany.
This whole plot it luckily got stopped in its tracks
because hours before it was due to begin, police busted
(24:45):
down all in Roussev's front door. But the trial revealed
that the Russian state wasn't just using Marcelek and the
Bulgarians to help wage its murderous war against Ukrainians. It
was also using them to help in its war against
its his own citizens. High Roman, oh, I letit on
(25:20):
on everything, Yes, okay, hi, Hello, thanks very much for
speaking with us a poem. I know it must be
quite difficult circumstances at the moment, but we really appreciate it.
Roman Debrokatov is an investigative reporter and the founder of
the Insider, an independent media organization with a focus on Russia.
(25:44):
He helped uncover the identity of the Russian agents behind
the Botch Saltbury poisonings in twenty eighteen, and he helped
reveal the attempted murder in twenty twenty of then Russian
opposition leader Alexey Navalni using the poison Novichok, all of
which has made him pretty unpopular with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(26:04):
Roman currently lives in an undisclosed location. He's under police
protection and reveals as little information about his movements as possible.
So we didn't meet in person, but once upon a
time he lived in Russia.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
Well, actually I'm in Russia every night, because like literally
every night I have a dream that I'm there, and
that usually it's one scenario that I'm doing something ordinary,
like I'm preparing to go to play football, or I'm
i don't know, like speaking with my relatives or something,
and suddenly at some point I realize that something is wrong.
(26:41):
I just remember that actually I can't be now in Russia.
This is impossible, because they are going to arrest me,
and like this is surreal as it's supposed to be
in a dream. A feeling of like what is happening
to you cannot be real.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
In twenty twenty one, Roman had to flee his home,
his friends, and his family.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
It was a choice between being killed or in prison.
I didn't know all this time. I still don't know
what was the plan. And the other auction was just
to have a big risk, but try to get real freedom.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
In the middle of the night, he crept across a
sunflower field, out of Russia and into Ukraine.
Speaker 6 (27:36):
The second after I crossed the border, I felt, not
even psychologically, but even physiologically. I felt how big was
the broaden that fell.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
From his shoulders, except that in Europe he wouldn't be
entirely safe either. It was November twenty twenty one, several
months after Roman had left Russia behind. He finished a
meeting with his team in Budapest, said goodbye to his colleagues,
(28:10):
and made his way to the airport. But as he
waited to board his flight to Berlin, he didn't realize
that he had company because one of the minions was
waiting to board the plane too. She would be sat
next to him, not by coincidence, but by design. As
he settled into his seat, he had no idea that
(28:30):
someone was watching.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
Him if we didn't even have an icon that she
had a camera in her shoulder so she could watch everything.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
As it turned out, weeks earlier, Rusev had gained access
to a pan European flight booking system used by most
major airlines, and that meant that Ruceven Marcelek could put
their minions next to anyone they wanted on any flight
across the continent and beyond all of this. It's revealed
in the messages sent back and forth between the group.
On the telegram, Marcelek was delighted.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
The future flights are amazing data. I absolutely love that
airline system.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Roman is settling into seat for A, and Russev's undercover girl,
as he refers to her, is in seat for B.
She'll be taking lots of selfies during the flight, Rusev
jokes in a message to Marcelek. Later, he sent Marcelek
an update. Our agent was very, very observant, he wrote.
She had even watched Roman unlock his iPhone and remembered
(29:30):
the code. Marcelek responded with a grinning emoji and.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
The words afraid of Noovichok.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Indeed, stalking Roman on this flight wasn't the end of
the operation against him. Marcelex seemed to have impressed the
higher ups in Moscow. Now his team had proved they
could get close to Roman undetected, it looked like they
be offered more work, and this time it might involve
more responsibility. The following year, Marcelec wrote to Rusev.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
We might get the opportunity to kidnap r D any
ideas how to do this.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Rusev confirmed that if they got the green light for
the kidnapping, he had a team ready in waiting.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
A successful operation on British ground would be amazing after
the fuck up scrip Ale stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
This is a reference to the Salisbury poisonings, which had
ultimately failed because the target was still alive. If Marcelett
could carry out a successful operation against a target in
the UK, it would be a huge coup. They brainstormed
other ways to harm Roman in case Moscow might want
a more radical intervention, like spraying him with the nerve
(30:38):
agent VX or burning him alive in the street. It
wasn't until the Bulgarian cell was busted by UK police.
That Roman found out about any of this, it made
him realize that possibly there would never be a place
where he could escape the predations of his own government.
(31:00):
Yet for all of that, he has kept remarkably composed.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
I think that the persons cannot be like scared for
too long. But like physiologically, this is a feeling that
you can have for a shutdown, to mobilize yourself, and
then it's just a Dournes off.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Perhaps he's just very brave, but perhaps two he knows
that being intimidated it's exactly what Russia wants him to
feel and for others like him to feel too.
Speaker 6 (31:29):
So the death threat of investigative illness is still much
lower than in a Ukraine army. So we shouldn't a
bit too depressed about the supation.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
That's a very noble thing of you to say. Given
that it your life must have changed completely. I mean,
not only have you left your homeland country you were
born in, but also now as you've just said, you're
you know, you're having to move around. You can't talk
about you know where you are. Your life is very disrupted.
What can you tell us about the ongoing threat to you?
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So I know that.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
Russian intelligence is still dusking other criminals to look for you.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Roman has been reporting on Marcelect too, and has continued
despite becoming a target of his aspiring And he's noticed
a sort of dark parallel.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
Well, like people are hunting each other from different parts
of the world. So he came to Russia. I can
do Europe from Russia. I'm sorry, and arrested in absence
in Russia. The same with Masalik in Europe. So yeah,
we have some kind of symmetric to each other.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
On the twelfth of May twenty twenty five, the Central
Criminal Court in London passed its judgment. All six accused
were found guilty of conspiracy to spy. The shortest sentence
handed down was for five years in jail. The longest
against Russev was for nearly eleven years. You might think,
(33:18):
hearing all this a tale of aggressive, complicated covert operations
entrusted to amateurs with little regard for risk or consequences,
that Russia is pretty out of control, And in one
sense you would be right. Many European governments are genuinely
concerned that in recent years Russia has, as Britain's intelligence
(33:41):
chief told the ft last year, Gone Ferrel. Only the
rather alarming thing is that this chaos, this risk taking,
it's by design. Coming up on the season finale of
(34:10):
Hot Money.
Speaker 9 (34:12):
They are former intelligence officers and military people with an
intelligence war mindset who have now turned the tradecraft of
the KDB into the statecraft of the Russian state.
Speaker 8 (34:27):
Just shows that these people were motivated by money. They
do whatever work was necessary by whoever was prepared to
pay them.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Hot Money is a production of The Financial Times and
Pushkin Industries. It was written and reported by me Sam Jones.
The senior producer and co writer is Peggy Sutton. Our
producer is Izzy Carter. Our researcher is Marine Saint. Our
show is edited by Karen shakerge fact checking by Kira Levigne.
(35:04):
Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorsky and Marcelo de Olivia,
with additional sound design by Izzy Carter. Original music from
Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphonet. Our show
art is by Sean Carney. Our executive producers are Cheryl Brumley,
Amy Gains McQuaid and Matthew Garahan. Additional editing by Paul Murphy.
(35:29):
Special thanks to Ruler Klaffe, Dan McCrumb, Laura Clark, Alistair Mackey,
Manueli Saragosa, Nigel Hanson, Vicky Merrick, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner,
Jake Flanagan, Jacob Goldstein, Sarah Nix, and Greta Cohne. I'm
Sam Jones. Hi again. I just wanted to let you
(35:59):
know about two actions to previous episodes. In episode three,
we reported that Marcelec told Killian Kleinschmidt that he arrived
in Palmira in Syria in a Meek eight. That was
an error. Killian only recalls Marcelex saying that he arrived
in Syria in a helicopter, and we're not exactly sure
what kind. In episode four, we said that Marcelek left
(36:19):
home just before taking his final school exams at age seventeen.
In fact, he was aged eighteen when he left home.
I want to take a moment to thank you for
being a pushkin Plus subscriber. I hope you're enjoying hot money.
Be sure to take advantage of all pushkin Plus has
to offer, including ad free access to all pushkin shows,
(36:42):
bonus episodes, early access, exclusive binges, and full audiobooks. After
this episode
Pushkin previously on Hot Money.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The evidence that led to the raid was incredibly weak
and should have never have led to this raid to happen,
and we are still suffering from this raid.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
If you want to guess about how worse would an
intelligence asset like marceleg be, then you would say were very.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Worthy, very very valuable as a very h It's June
twenty twenty two. Jan Marcelek is in Moscow. It's been
almost two years since Waquard was exposed as a fraud,
and during these two years he's been in near constant
contact with one person in particular via the secure messaging
(01:04):
app Telegram. Right now, Marcelek is asking this person if
their regular career can pick up something very important for him,
something he has a hankering for dessert. We're going to
read out his messages for you.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
On a personal note, would he have time to drop
by the Saka shop to buy two cakes for me?
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Marcelek is after one of the most famous inventions of
his home city, Sacha Torte chocolate cake. From the moment
he fled Europe. This person he's asking about the cake
has been around to help him life on the run.
Hasn't always been easy for Marceleg and this friend. He's
tried when he can to offer some reassurance. Keep your
(01:50):
chin up, he tells Marcelec. At least the Russian women
are beautiful, especially the blondes, and Marceleg replies, don't tell me.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I've been there, dangerous and admittedly I never fully recovered.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Is this a reference perhaps to Natalia's Lobina, the woman
on the yacht with Yan all those years ago in Nice.
For the most part, Marcelex seems in good spirits. He's
not one to take anything too seriously really, including being
a fugitive.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Being a wanted man helps to refine one's humor, it
might just become a little darker.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Marcelex's interlocutor has been far more than just a cake
courier and wingman. However, He's helped Marcelek establish himself in Russia,
sorted out his finances, organized his chaotic paperwork, and, perhaps
most importantly of all, he's also been a recruiter for Marcelek.
(02:47):
When Marcelec took heel as a fraudster and was outed
on the front page of the FT as a Russian asset,
you might have thought the jig would be up. But
it wasn't the only life that was over for Marcelek.
The one he permanently said goodbye to was his ordinary one,
his life in Munich, his corporate persona. Because these telegram
(03:09):
messages lay bare what Marcelec has continued to get up
to on behalf of the Russian state since he disappeared
from view, Marcelek has been running intelligence operations for Russia
across Europe, not just one kind of operation, a whole
range of endeavors, aggressive, seemingly unconnected, risky. In this episode,
(03:32):
for the first time in this series, we get to
hear from Marceilek directly in his own words, because these
messages between Marcelek, his friend and others ended up in
the hands of police when aspiring run by Marcelek was
caught and went on trial. I'm Sam Jones from the
(03:54):
Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. This is Hot Money, Season three,
Agent of Chaos, Episode seven, from Russia with Love. So
(04:15):
far this story has taken me to Vienna, to Munich,
to the south of France, to Tunis. But right now
here I am in Great Yarmouth. That's the sound of
a tiny little train, one of those little toy trains
going past that takes people from car parks to the seafront.
(04:38):
Great Yarmouth is a seaside resort on the Norfolk coast,
about three hours northeast of London. There's a beautiful sandy beach,
a pleasure pier and a fairground. The seafront is lined
with amusement arcades, a handful of grand buildings hint at
former prosperity, but there hasn't been much money in the
town for decades. It's the most in common grows place,
(05:00):
given what happened here and how significant it was. But
then again, in this kind of story, and in a
lot of spy fiction, two half forgotten, liminal places like
this are often at the heart of the matter. The
terraced streets off the seafront are full of guesthouses, but
(05:22):
many of these are boarded up. My producer Peggy and
I are here to see one guesthouse, in particular on
Prince's Road, the Heyd. There it is on the right.
It's the white and blue one. Oh here at the end, Yeah, yeah,
I see that. Windows are all shuttered, curtains all drawn.
Opposite the Heyd there's a pub, so we go in,
(05:44):
hoping to find someone who can maybe tell us more
about what happened here on Prince's Road on a cold
February morning in twenty twenty three, where A Scott is
the landlady. She had a ringside seat and.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
I turned up just before nine. Always get the doors
a and the straightaway. He saw the vade that there
is a big tent awning thing at the front of
the building.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Moira knows the rhythm of Great Yarmouth well and she's
pretty unflappable.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
First of all, I thought someone might have been murdered,
but I did think, well, there's no ambulances or anything,
and there's no police cars. And then I saw these
men or women or blest out with bile Klav was on.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Earlier that morning, squads of police and security officials arrived
at Number twenty seven, heavily armed and bashed the door
in body cam footage of one of the officers shows
police streaming into the building in the dawnlight through dim
rooms on the ground floor. At the back, they found
the person they were looking for. All In Russev, a
(06:53):
Bulgarian man. He looks terrified, his pupils are wide. The
police officer pushes him up against a wall and holds
him there, and in the background you can hear other
officers stamping up the stairs. He stammers to the officer
restraining him.
Speaker 6 (07:10):
I think there's the wrong place.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
The Hedi is no longer a guest house. It's Roussev's home,
and it's an Aladdin's cave, or perhaps more of a
poarder's layer. It's stacked high with boxes and clutter. One
of the rooms at the back seems to be Rousev's office.
It's packed full of what police later described as a
vast amount of computer and technical hardware.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
You've got a number.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
Of US fees on the desk that I can see here,
and to the right of the desk there are a
number of yes, yes, devices yours ah. I have for
purchased some on the eBay, and I'm a repairing many
of those.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Russev tells them he's running an IT repair business, but
that's not true. Most of this equipment it's for surveillance.
And it's only later when technical experts begin to pour
through the stuff they've seized that they find the treasure.
The telegram messages between Marcelek and his correspondent. Because all
(08:16):
An Russev is the cake courier, the fan of Russian blonds,
the man who has served as Marcelec's right hand during
his exile in Moscow. There are three hundred thousand telegram
messages in total. Eighty thousand alone are between Rusev and Marcelek,
and the rest are between Russev and the agents he'd
(08:37):
recruited to do Marcelex bidding. A year and nine months
after the raid in Great Yarmouth, the biggest public espionage
trial in modern UK history begins in London. All in
Rusev is in the dock and alongside him of five
others like him. They're all Bulgarian nationals who had been
granted the right to live permanently in the UK. The
(09:01):
Crown Prosecution Service accuses them of participating in a bewildering
array of high stakes espionage operations on British soil and
across Europe. My colleague Kelen Warrell had a front row
seat for it all. She spent years reporting on security
for the ft.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
It's very rare that they get to prosecute espionage, so
this is a huge deal.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
There's one notable absence in the courtroom, of course.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
I would say that Marzleck really was like a.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Sort of ghost that wanted this trial.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
He was clearly the organizing mind, and he was there,
you know, in black and white in these telegram messages.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
The messages between Marcelek and Russev are at the heart
of the prosecution's evidence. What's striking about them at first glance, though,
is that they're just like any other online conversation between
two admittedly slightly odd pals.
Speaker 8 (09:55):
I mean, one thing that's quite funny is he absolutely
loves this bizarre laughing wombat emoji, which he uses constantly
when Russev says something that sort of tickles him.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Now, I felt I needed to see this for myself,
and I can actually confirm that it isn't a wombat
but a raccoon. Helen says she's no zoologist anyway, you know.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
So they're sort of leering about women, and there are
often quite sort of long and tedious exchanges where they
pontificate about geopolitics in quite a sort of boring way.
You know, this is just the sort of message equivalent
to the manosphere.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
As in this choice piece of bravado from Marceilek.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Apologies, I was stuck between the mafia half of Russia's ambassadors,
the gru that doesn't naked girls, and some deep stek
guys whose names no one knows. They forced me to
drink a bottle of gin.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
The messages found that the Hadi also reveal a closeness
between the two men. At New Year's Marcelek effusively thanks
his friend for his work, and he signs off.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
From Russia with love.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
But far more importantly, the message is exposed to Marcelek
and Roussev had working for them, And the more I
learn about them, the more it makes me wonder how
it could be that Russia, an undoubted espionage superpower, has
ended up depending on people like this as its frontline
foot soldiers. Let me take you through the Orc chart.
(11:23):
Marcelek was at the top of the group giving orders
from Moscow in Great Yarmouth. Rusev was his number two,
Marcelex's ideas guy, his operations man, and Rusev then sets
things in motion via his man on the ground, his
troop leader, if you will, a man called Beza Zamberzov,
who he and Marcelex sometimes jokingly referred to as Jean
(11:47):
Claude van Dam. That's a reference to the nineteen nineties
movie star and Belgian beefcake. Zambazov lived in North London,
and it was there that he collected four underlings, who
he Rusev and Marcelect sometimes disparagingly referred to in their
messages as the Minions after the hapless yellow comic creatures
from the Despicable Me films. None of them were professional
(12:11):
intelligence operatives by day. They had perfectly ordinary jobs a driver,
a beautician, a decorator, a lab technician. Two of them
are women, Katrin Ivanova and Vanya Gaborova, and Zambazov had
rather complicated relationships with both of them.
Speaker 8 (12:30):
He and Vanya were naked while when they were arrested
in bed together, so this is him and his girlfriend
while his long term partner, Katrina was at work at
the time. And actually one of the more absurd things
that came out in the trial was that he pretended
to both women that he had brain cancer, so he
sort of was playing them off against each other slightly,
(12:51):
but he was also using this entirely fake diagnosis to
essentially inveiguel them into doing things that they didn't particularly
want to do on the basis that he was too
sick and that he was going through treatment. There was
a completely extraordinary evidence where he was shown speaking to
one of them on a sort of WhatsApp call and
(13:11):
he had wound toilet paper around his head to look
like a bandage, sort of as if he had just
recently had brain surgery.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
You might be thinking, as I am, that all of
this is beginning to sound a bit more farcical than threatening,
more Keystone Cops than Casino Royal. Because when I think
of what a good spiring probably needs to work, the
first things that spring to mind are skill, trust, and loyalty.
If you don't have those, then how can you hope
(13:45):
to stay secret. These guys had far too little appetite
for discretion. Sometimes they seem to be a bit carried
away by it all.
Speaker 8 (13:54):
I think at some points they were sort of surprised
by the excitement of it. There's a those that were
shown in evidence of Gabarova using her RayBan.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Spyglasses, sunglasses that have been equipped with a miniature camera.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
You know, she takes a photo of herself and a
hotel mirror sort of selfie in these glasses, and you
can see that there is an element of glamour here.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
But Here's the thing. Despite how amateurish the minions seem
to be, the plots Marcelek and Russev tasked them with
were frighteningly ambitious. In those thousands of telegram messages I
(14:39):
told you about, Marcelek and his minions discussed a multitude
of plots, some staid ideas in the ether, others were
put into action in the real world. I'm going to
tell you about three of them, which struck me because
they were operations on the front line of Russia's shadow
work to manipulate its allies, so chaos amongst its enemies
(15:03):
and silence its critics. To understand the first, you need
to know a little bit about Kazakhstan, the largest former
state of the USSR after Russia itself. Since independence, Kazakhstan
has had a close but complicated relationship with its neighbour
and former overlord. In twenty nineteen, when there was a
(15:25):
change in government, Russia began to worry about Kazakhstan drifting
out of its political orbit. Enter Yan Marcelek and dominions.
Russia's intelligence services brief Marcelek on their problem, and Marcelek
he gets to work engineering a potential solution with Russev
(15:46):
on the agenda, putting pressure on the new Kazakh president,
making things hard for him close to home, literally by
even looking at ways to target his family. What Marcelek
describes in a telegram message to Russev as creative.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Ways to make their lives miserable.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Marcelex spitballs some ideas, ways he can spread some nasty rumors.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Maybe a deep fake porn video of the son of
the president. Also a honey trap for the sun when
he is traveling in Europe could be a fun option.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It sounds like these ideas are going down well in
Moscow when Marcelek writes to Russev, the gru.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Guys are saying will be a drama in Kazakhstan if
we publish this.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
To be clear, because this isn't immediately obvious, the messages
show that the idea was to secretly create a problem
and then offer a phony solution to it, to set
up the president's son, and then offer the president fake
information about the people responsible, because the end goal here
was to actually strengthen diplomatic relationships between Russia and Kazakhstan
(16:51):
to make the new Kazakh government think it still needed
Russia's help, and that Russia was a beneficent ally thankfully
for the president's son. Marcelek and Roussev eventually settle on
a different course of action, an operation aimed at the
Kazakh Embassy in London, an operation that would actually require
(17:11):
a lot of careful planning for false trails to be
laid and a spectacular Kudae teatre at the end to
really grab the Kazakh government's attention on paper, a really
impressive piece of tradecraft with a lot required to pull
it off. At the center of the plan is a
protest outside the embassy, but not just any protest, something
(17:33):
really provocative. They discuss using drones to cover the embassy
with one hundred liters of pigs blood. They will make
it look like the pig's blood has been sprayed by
pro democracy protesters. This seems to get the green light
because Marcelek and Russev go on to agree a budget
before discussing details like how can the blood be diluted
(17:54):
so that it can be effectively sprayed and how can
it be mixed to glow at night. Russev seems to
be making progress. One of the minions has sent him
videos of vials of blood. In a message to Marsilek,
he tells him the quote Vampire Team are ready for tests.
Marcelek responds, bloody, glorious literally. Zamberzov and the Minions meanwhile
(18:19):
take it in terms to surveil the embassy to work
out the best plan of attack, including using a drone.
Rusev gets sent videos and photos from their covert reconnaissance.
It's not just this protest, though, There's a whole hinterground
that Marcelek, Rusev and the Minions have worked on building
out for the alleged perpetrators of this protest. They've drawn
(18:43):
up letters from this fake group to senior American and
European politicians urging them to sanction Kazakhstan. They've even booked
out a room in a pub in London under the
group's name to make it look like there was a
real planning meeting taking place for their activists. Rusev and
Zamberzov discussed creating a scene at the pub bar to
make sure witnesses remember something was going on. The Paulsin plan,
(19:07):
luckily for London's public hygiene officers, never goes ahead, but
the groundwork for the operation has been so successful that
it alone is actually already bearing fruit glorious.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
News from Kazakhstan. Kazakh intelligence is in a small panic
and wants our Russian friends to investigate who this new
group of activists is. They will provide money to bribe
the Russians to investigate.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
The thing is this operation. It's super high risk and
Marceelek seems to know it when he tells Rusev.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Don't want anyone outside a small circle in the GRU
to know about this Kazakh attack story.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Because obviously, if the Kazakh government ever found out it
was marcelect behind this and the GRU behind him deliberately
humiliating them in public and falsely claiming to be able
to help them. Well, I guess they'd be rather peeved.
I wonder how all this went down in the Kazakh
capital Astana when it came out at the trial. Then again,
(20:07):
when it comes to intelligence operations, one thing I've learned
is that Russia very rarely seems to factor in the
cost of public shame. In another operation, the minions were
being used to daub hate symbols at various public locations
around Europe, including the Jewish Museum in Vienna.
Speaker 8 (20:22):
They put up material that looks as if it's associated
with the Azov Brigade, which is obviously this group of
fighters in Ukraine who are said to have some sort
of fascist or Nazi ideology, although obviously that is entirely
debatable and some people claim it's not the case at all,
But so they are very much amplifying the Kremlin's arguments
(20:46):
and their sort of propaganda.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The intent was to generate news stories that would support
Russia's justification for its invasion of Ukraine, the narrative that Ukraine,
Austria and Europe are turning fascist, which brings me to
an even more sensitive mission that the minions were tasked
with about a year after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine,
one which could actually help Russia on the battlefield. At
(21:14):
this point in the war, Russia was struggling and Ukraine
was pushing back. Marcelex sent russerv a message. He told
him he was likely to have a meeting tomorrow with
our friends.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Who have asked for help in Germany with mobile tracking.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Marcelek tells Russev that his friends, aka Russian military intelligence,
want to try and locate seventy Ukrainians who have arrived
in Germany for training at a US air base. Marcelek
thinks the Ukrainians are there to learn how to use
Patriot air defense systems, the missiles gifted to Ukraine by
NATO allies to help defend Ukrainian civilians from Russian bombing raids.
(21:51):
Marcelek asks, can we use.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
The mccatcher in Germany? We need to spy in Ukrainians
at a German military base.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Now you've probably never heard of an Imsey catcher, and
for good reason, because this is military grade technology worth
more than one hundred thousand pounds, and what it does
is hoover up cell phone data. It collects the individual
signatures and locations of devices near it. Rusev He's got
one at home. He's excited to put it to use.
(22:21):
It's just gathering dust, he tells Marslek in his quote
Indiana Jones garage.
Speaker 8 (22:29):
Now, you can't buy an Imsey device anywhere, you know,
through reputable means. So we don't know how he got
hold of this. And it wasn't just that he managed
to purchase it. He also then sort of retrofitted it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Rucev tells Marcelek he can hide the Imsey catcher in
his car.
Speaker 8 (22:49):
So he managed to sort of buy a second hand
Chrysler and he fitted the IMZY into the boot of
the chrysler and he wired it up with a red
button on the steering wheel that pretty much said, you know,
press here to activate the IMZ. So he was sort
of hutting together these different bits of hardware that he'd
managed to acquire.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
As the planning develops, Russev sets up a telegram group
chat to loop in the Minions. He writes that he
wants them to quote go on a tour in Germany
for one or two days. Russev wants Zambazov an Aminion
to do areki to maybe see if there's an apartment
they can rent near the base and a discrete spot
close to its fence where he can park his imsymobile.
(23:35):
The plan was to set up the imsycatcher there for
several weeks, to leave it running and to collect as
much cell phone data from people on the base as possible,
and then to give all this data to Russia so
that Russia would be able to locate these trained Ukrainians
and kill them. Now, if you were a military intelligence
(23:58):
officer from the GI I'm not sure you'd be able
to undertake this operation even with all the training and
skills in the world, because in recent years European intelligence
agencies have been doing all they can to track Russian
agents at work on the continent, and they're pretty good
at it. Hundreds of suspected Russian intelligence operatives have been expelled.
(24:23):
But if you're a Bulgarian beautician from London or a
mobile phone repair man from Great Yarmouth, who will be
paying attention when you drive across a border or end
up renting an Airbnb in a small town in Germany.
This whole plot it luckily got stopped in its tracks
because hours before it was due to begin, police busted
(24:45):
down all in Roussev's front door. But the trial revealed
that the Russian state wasn't just using Marcelek and the
Bulgarians to help wage its murderous war against Ukrainians. It
was also using them to help in its war against
its his own citizens. High Roman, oh, I letit on
(25:20):
on everything, Yes, okay, hi, Hello, thanks very much for
speaking with us a poem. I know it must be
quite difficult circumstances at the moment, but we really appreciate it.
Roman Debrokatov is an investigative reporter and the founder of
the Insider, an independent media organization with a focus on Russia.
(25:44):
He helped uncover the identity of the Russian agents behind
the Botch Saltbury poisonings in twenty eighteen, and he helped
reveal the attempted murder in twenty twenty of then Russian
opposition leader Alexey Navalni using the poison Novichok, all of
which has made him pretty unpopular with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(26:04):
Roman currently lives in an undisclosed location. He's under police
protection and reveals as little information about his movements as possible.
So we didn't meet in person, but once upon a
time he lived in Russia.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
Well, actually I'm in Russia every night, because like literally
every night I have a dream that I'm there, and
that usually it's one scenario that I'm doing something ordinary,
like I'm preparing to go to play football, or I'm
i don't know, like speaking with my relatives or something,
and suddenly at some point I realize that something is wrong.
(26:41):
I just remember that actually I can't be now in Russia.
This is impossible, because they are going to arrest me,
and like this is surreal as it's supposed to be
in a dream. A feeling of like what is happening
to you cannot be real.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
In twenty twenty one, Roman had to flee his home,
his friends, and his family.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
It was a choice between being killed or in prison.
I didn't know all this time. I still don't know
what was the plan. And the other auction was just
to have a big risk, but try to get real freedom.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
In the middle of the night, he crept across a
sunflower field, out of Russia and into Ukraine.
Speaker 6 (27:36):
The second after I crossed the border, I felt, not
even psychologically, but even physiologically. I felt how big was
the broaden that fell.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
From his shoulders, except that in Europe he wouldn't be
entirely safe either. It was November twenty twenty one, several
months after Roman had left Russia behind. He finished a
meeting with his team in Budapest, said goodbye to his colleagues,
(28:10):
and made his way to the airport. But as he
waited to board his flight to Berlin, he didn't realize
that he had company because one of the minions was
waiting to board the plane too. She would be sat
next to him, not by coincidence, but by design. As
he settled into his seat, he had no idea that
(28:30):
someone was watching.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
Him if we didn't even have an icon that she
had a camera in her shoulder so she could watch everything.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
As it turned out, weeks earlier, Rusev had gained access
to a pan European flight booking system used by most
major airlines, and that meant that Ruceven Marcelek could put
their minions next to anyone they wanted on any flight
across the continent and beyond all of this. It's revealed
in the messages sent back and forth between the group.
On the telegram, Marcelek was delighted.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
The future flights are amazing data. I absolutely love that
airline system.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Roman is settling into seat for A, and Russev's undercover girl,
as he refers to her, is in seat for B.
She'll be taking lots of selfies during the flight, Rusev
jokes in a message to Marcelek. Later, he sent Marcelek
an update. Our agent was very, very observant, he wrote.
She had even watched Roman unlock his iPhone and remembered
(29:30):
the code. Marcelek responded with a grinning emoji and.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
The words afraid of Noovichok.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Indeed, stalking Roman on this flight wasn't the end of
the operation against him. Marcelex seemed to have impressed the
higher ups in Moscow. Now his team had proved they
could get close to Roman undetected, it looked like they
be offered more work, and this time it might involve
more responsibility. The following year, Marcelec wrote to Rusev.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
We might get the opportunity to kidnap r D any
ideas how to do this.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Rusev confirmed that if they got the green light for
the kidnapping, he had a team ready in waiting.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
A successful operation on British ground would be amazing after
the fuck up scrip Ale stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
This is a reference to the Salisbury poisonings, which had
ultimately failed because the target was still alive. If Marcelett
could carry out a successful operation against a target in
the UK, it would be a huge coup. They brainstormed
other ways to harm Roman in case Moscow might want
a more radical intervention, like spraying him with the nerve
(30:38):
agent VX or burning him alive in the street. It
wasn't until the Bulgarian cell was busted by UK police.
That Roman found out about any of this, it made
him realize that possibly there would never be a place
where he could escape the predations of his own government.
(31:00):
Yet for all of that, he has kept remarkably composed.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
I think that the persons cannot be like scared for
too long. But like physiologically, this is a feeling that
you can have for a shutdown, to mobilize yourself, and
then it's just a Dournes off.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Perhaps he's just very brave, but perhaps two he knows
that being intimidated it's exactly what Russia wants him to
feel and for others like him to feel too.
Speaker 6 (31:29):
So the death threat of investigative illness is still much
lower than in a Ukraine army. So we shouldn't a
bit too depressed about the supation.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
That's a very noble thing of you to say. Given
that it your life must have changed completely. I mean,
not only have you left your homeland country you were
born in, but also now as you've just said, you're
you know, you're having to move around. You can't talk
about you know where you are. Your life is very disrupted.
What can you tell us about the ongoing threat to you?
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So I know that.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
Russian intelligence is still dusking other criminals to look for you.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Roman has been reporting on Marcelect too, and has continued
despite becoming a target of his aspiring And he's noticed
a sort of dark parallel.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
Well, like people are hunting each other from different parts
of the world. So he came to Russia. I can
do Europe from Russia. I'm sorry, and arrested in absence
in Russia. The same with Masalik in Europe. So yeah,
we have some kind of symmetric to each other.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
On the twelfth of May twenty twenty five, the Central
Criminal Court in London passed its judgment. All six accused
were found guilty of conspiracy to spy. The shortest sentence
handed down was for five years in jail. The longest
against Russev was for nearly eleven years. You might think,
(33:18):
hearing all this a tale of aggressive, complicated covert operations
entrusted to amateurs with little regard for risk or consequences,
that Russia is pretty out of control, And in one
sense you would be right. Many European governments are genuinely
concerned that in recent years Russia has, as Britain's intelligence
(33:41):
chief told the ft last year, Gone Ferrel. Only the
rather alarming thing is that this chaos, this risk taking,
it's by design. Coming up on the season finale of
(34:10):
Hot Money.
Speaker 9 (34:12):
They are former intelligence officers and military people with an
intelligence war mindset who have now turned the tradecraft of
the KDB into the statecraft of the Russian state.
Speaker 8 (34:27):
Just shows that these people were motivated by money. They
do whatever work was necessary by whoever was prepared to
pay them.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Hot Money is a production of The Financial Times and
Pushkin Industries. It was written and reported by me Sam Jones.
The senior producer and co writer is Peggy Sutton. Our
producer is Izzy Carter. Our researcher is Marine Saint. Our
show is edited by Karen shakerge fact checking by Kira Levigne.
(35:04):
Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorsky and Marcelo de Olivia,
with additional sound design by Izzy Carter. Original music from
Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphonet. Our show
art is by Sean Carney. Our executive producers are Cheryl Brumley,
Amy Gains McQuaid and Matthew Garahan. Additional editing by Paul Murphy.
(35:29):
Special thanks to Ruler Klaffe, Dan McCrumb, Laura Clark, Alistair Mackey,
Manueli Saragosa, Nigel Hanson, Vicky Merrick, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner,
Jake Flanagan, Jacob Goldstein, Sarah Nix, and Greta Cohne. I'm
Sam Jones. Hi again. I just wanted to let you
(35:59):
know about two actions to previous episodes. In episode three,
we reported that Marcelec told Killian Kleinschmidt that he arrived
in Palmira in Syria in a Meek eight. That was
an error. Killian only recalls Marcelex saying that he arrived
in Syria in a helicopter, and we're not exactly sure
what kind. In episode four, we said that Marcelek left
(36:19):
home just before taking his final school exams at age seventeen.
In fact, he was aged eighteen when he left home.
I want to take a moment to thank you for
being a pushkin Plus subscriber. I hope you're enjoying hot money.
Be sure to take advantage of all pushkin Plus has
to offer, including ad free access to all pushkin shows,
(36:42):
bonus episodes, early access, exclusive binges, and full audiobooks. After
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