Alleged Russian spy says she believed she was working for Interpol
Alleged Russian spy says she believed she was working for Interpol
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Vanya Gaberova tells Old Bailey a man showed fake ID and told her untrained people were better at surveillance. A woman accused of spying for Moscow told the Old Bailey she believed she was working for Interpol after a man showed her a fake ID and told her he could enrol her at “police school in Wembley”.
On her first day of giving evidence, London-based Vanya Gaberova, a 30-year-old beautician, said she did not question Bizer Dzhambazov, 43, who also told her that untrained people like her were better at surveillance because they did not stand out in a crowd.
Gaberova said she and Dzhambazov became close in August 2021 and gradually started a relationship as he began to give her surveillance tasks around Europe, which prosecutors say were for the benefit of Russia. Dzhambazov, a medical courier, told her he was part of an Interpol economic crime unit and showed her credentials, which she did not question, and added that he could help her get a job in the police, which she said was an aspiration of hers.
“I told him my dream is to be police like him, and then he told me ‘you can be if you want’. He said he knew people who can help me,” she told the court. Dzhambazov said there was “a police university in Wembley” that he could get her into, though the court has heard his only academic connection was to organise council-funded English classes for Bulgarian migrants.
The fake identification had his face and a flag on it and, while other members of her family questioned whether he was a police officer, she said she never doubted it. “Even when I was arrested [in February 2023] I didn’t believe something was wrong,” she said.
