An alleged Russian spy fell in love with another spy after travelling around Europe to follow an anti-Putin journalist, she has told a court.
Vanya Gaberova, 30, who ran a beauticians called Pretty Woman, in Acton, West London, said she believed that Bizer Dzhambazov, 43, was working for Interpol and agreed to help him when he told her they used civilians for surveillance operations.
Gaberova travelled to Vienna and Valencia alongside Dzhambazov, who was following journalist Christo Grozev.
Dzhambazov has admitted running the operations for a Russian spy ring along with Orlin Roussev, 46, who lived in a 33-room guesthouse in Great Yarmouth.
However, Gaberova, her ex-boyfriend Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, and Dzhambazov’s longterm partner Katrin Ivanova, 33, all deny knowing they were working for the Russians.
Gaberova was in a love triangle with another alleged female spy but told the Old Bailey she believed they had split up.
Dressed in a black jacket, white blouse and glasses, Gaberova told the court that Dzhambazov was ‘very loud, he liked attention, he was a person who talked most of the time, he was the soul of the gathering.’
She said she was ‘quite impressed, I was quite intrigued.’
They had first met when she was volunteering at a polling station in Ealing for the Bulgarian national elections in 2021, three years after she had moved to Britain to be with Ivanchev.
They met again among a group of friends at a Serbian restaurant in Ealing and Dzhambazov got on well with Ivanchev because they both had an interest in crypto currencies she said.
He joined Gaberova and her niece on a shopping trip to Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush after asking if he could use her friends discount at Hugo Boss.
After he left, she said, ‘whenever he talks he always makes a joke and always makes you laugh and we were talking a lot about him.
‘She was saying he’s very impressive. He may not be the best looking guy but he has a good heart.’
Anthony Metzer KC, defending, asked: ‘Do you think he was charming you. Looking back or at the time?’
‘That’s him, he is charming,’ Gaberova said. ‘It is not only to me he tried to do this, with everybody. For him it’s important, for instance if he talked to you, that you like him. This is important to him.’
At the time she was not attracted to him and he was ‘just a friend who was doing such a nice thing,’ she said.
Around her birthday in August 2021, Dzhambazov told her he worked for the economic unit at Interpol, working on extraditions, and showed her an Interpol pass, which turned out to be fake.
‘One of these cards was always in his wallet,’ she said.
‘Did you have any doubt that the badge and ID card were anything other than genuine?’ Mr Metzer asked.
‘No, even after I was arrested, I didn’t believe that something was wrong,’ she said.
Dzhambazov told Gaberova that he would help her get a place at a ‘police university’ in Wembley and she could come and work with him.
She had always wanted to get into the police and told the court: ‘Oh my god I was so happy I was go back and I was so excited I thought he meant everything and he was going to help me to do this.’
Around the same time, her relationship with Ivanchev was deteriorating.
‘There was one comment that hurt me a lot and I shared [with Dzhambazov] when he told me I was fat and had a big arse, I had put on weight.’
Dzhmabazov told her that Ivanova was cheating on him and he wanted to break up with her.
‘We became very close we were seeing each other every day after my birthday.’
Dzhambazov invited her to Vienna in August 2021 where he was running a surveillance operation against Christo Grozev, a journalist who had revealed the identities of the Russian agents who poisoned the MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal.
Gaberova said: ‘He says you can come with me if you want.
‘He told me his trips are not only work, he also has time to himself as well – that’s how I agree.’
Mr Metzer asked: ‘On this holiday how much of the time was B doing some work and how much time was he relaxing?’
‘It was not more than one day.
A few weeks later they followed Grozev to Valencia in Spain.
‘I already know that his trips are very good holidays as well,’ Gaberova said.
‘He told me that they always use people who can help them. They always have people who are not police people that help them.
‘I was happy that I was on holiday in a different country. He told me this person had a house for a million and how did a journalist afford a place that expensive. He makes me believe that this person is a bad person.’
Dzhambazov ‘told me he likes me he has feelings for me. He told me he was attracted to me.’
Gaberova said she had ‘some feelings’ for him: ‘I had something to him but attracted is not the right word.’
Jurors heard that under instruction from Dzhambazov, she hailed a taxi and followed the journalist to a hotel in Valencia.
Mr Justice Hilliard asked: ‘He’s watching from one place and you are watching from a different place?’.
‘Yes’, she said.
The judge continued: ‘Were you surprised at all that he was asking that you’d be doing some watching and you might be getting in the car following?’
Gaberova replied: ‘No my lord because at the time he told me that they always used people who can help them.
‘He told me that they always have some people who are not police people who always help them for stuff like this’, she said.
They had sex on their first night at an Airbnb in Valencia and Dzhambazov then told her he had broken up with Ivanova, who was also in Valencia but had gone home.
She then moved to the Grand Palace Hotel in Valencia, where they stayed for four nights, going to the beach, eating out and going clubbing.
‘After we went to this hotel and had an amazing time and that’s when I fell in love with him,’ she told the jury.
In fact, Dzhambazov had not split up with Ivanova who told the jury she had been supporting him while she believed he had brain cancer.
Roussev and Dzhambazov have pleaded guilty to charges under the Official Secrets Act. Ivanova, Gaberova and Ivanchev deny the charges. All five are Bulgarian nationals with EU settled status. The trial continues.
