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Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek and a ring of Bulgarian spies he operated in the UK have been linked to a multibillion-dollar money laundering scheme that connects street-level drug dealers with sanctioned Russian oligarchs.
Two money laundering networks known as Smart and TGR were used by Russian intelligence services in an attempt to provide funding to Marsalek’s Bulgarian spies, according to the UK National Crime Agency.
The leader of the Bulgarian spy ring, Orlin Roussev, was jailed for 10 years and eight months in May alongside his five accomplices, all of whom were either convicted of spying for Russia or had pleaded guilty to having done so.
The link to Marsalek is the latest revelation in a years-long NCA investigation into Smart and TGR, which use cryptocurrency to move money for criminals and people under western sanctions.
The networks use couriers in Britain and elsewhere to collect physical cash generated from the drugs trade, firearms supply, and organised immigration crime, in exchange for cryptocurrency. The cash is then secretly sent to criminals or sanctioned individuals in other countries.
According to the NCA, individuals “associated with” the Russian Intelligence Services attempted to use Smart to provide funding to the Bulgarian spies in summer 2023, after police had arrested most of the members of the ring. Marsalek was established in Moscow at the time. The agency did not provide more detail on the attempt.
The scheme has been used by everyone from oligarchs to the Kinahan cartel, the Irish cocaine traffickers linked to numerous contract killings, according to the NCA.
“We are tying drugs trades in our community all the way through to the highest levels of organised crime, geopolitics, sanctions evasion, the Russian industrial military complex and state-linked activity,” said Sal Melki, NCA deputy director for economic crime.
Melki added: “So we can really draw a really clear thread between somebody buying some cocaine on a Friday night all the way through to geopolitical events that are causing suffering across the world.”
Smart is run by Ekaterina Zhdanova, a Russian national who has appeared on the covers of business magazines in Russia and was put under sanctions by the US in 2023. Zhdanova is in custody in France. The head of TGR is George Rossi, a Ukrainian national born in Russia who is also under US sanctions.
Marsalek, former chief operating officer of Wirecard, fled to Moscow after the payments company collapsed in a €1.9bn fraud scandal in June 2020.
He has acted as a freelance intelligence contractor for Russia’s spy agencies, and tasked the Bulgarian spy ring with a range of surveillance and sabotage operations across Europe.
While Marsalek is subject to an Interpol Red Notice for his role in the Wirecard fraud, he was not charged with espionage by the UK authorities.
The NCA’s investigation into the money laundering networks is known as Operation Destabilise. The UK has made 128 arrests and seized more than £25mn in cash and cryptocurrency.
The investigation has highlighted the Russian state’s willingness to work with organised crime gangs to counter western sanctions after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The NCA has tried to deter people from working for the networks with posters, written in both Russian and English, pinned to the bathroom walls of motorway service stations across the UK.
