A married couple who spied for Russia was arrested in Slovenia Info

Almost four months after the arrest of two Russian spies in Slovenia, new details about their lives are being revealed.

Majerova and Giša to their friends and neighbors in Slovenia said they were left Latin America due to fear of criminal groups and decided to live a more peaceful life in Slovenia. Since 2017, they live and work in Ljubljana. Guardian journalists talked to a dozen people who knew them. They described the couple as “ordinary” and “good” people, who were friendly and curious, but never aggressive.

Their neighbors in Črnuče were quite surprised when the police broke into the house, arrested the couple and took their two children to the welfare system. The police also searched the office owned by the married couple in the office building Lesnina in the Bežigrad district of Ljubljana, where they found a “huge” amount of cash, which took several hours to count.

“Illegals”

Majerova and Giš are suspected of being Russian “illegals”, spies who use false identities to falsify documents and names of stillborn babies or deceased persons. Illegals are trained for years to pretend to be foreigners, and then sent abroad to gather intelligence as agents.

Many have children, who are raised under false identities without any knowledge that their parents are actually Russian spies. This was also the case with the Mayer-Gish family, whose children spoke Spanish and led a seemingly carefree life. The spouses allegedly worked for the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR. They chose Ljubljana as their destination because the Slovenian intelligence network is among the weakest in Europe, writes the Guardian. This allowed the couple to travel throughout Europe without border checks. “Most of their activities were not in Slovenia,” said one source. The Slovenian Intelligence and Security Agency (Sova) would never have discovered them on their own, but a tip from the intelligence service of a “big country” helped them find them. One unnamed source familiar with the case said Moscow was quick to accept that the two arrested Russians were its ownintelligence officers.

The spouses are currently in custody in Slovenia, where they await the start of the trial. They are suspected of criminal acts of espionage and certification of untrue content, and face a total of eight years in prison., writes the Slovenian Delo. But at the same time, behind-the-scenes negotiations are taking place between Moscow and Western countries on the exchange of one or more people currently in prison in Russia.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Western countries have expelled hundreds of “legal” spies working in embassies across Europe under diplomatic cover. This may have forced Moscow to rely more on illegals as well as other informal networks. It is difficult to say with certainty what activities the arrested married couple in Slovenia could have performed for the SVR. However, there may be clues in their work and travel patterns.

She traveled often

Maria’s social media pages show that she is often traveled to promote her web gallery 5’14. It is not clear were her targets art circles or was she just using the gallery as an excuse to travel and do other intelligence work. She visited the art fair in Zagreb at least twice, and traveled to Great Britain several times, where she exhibited her works in a gallery in a shopping center in Edinburgh.

“We mostly had casual conversations and told jokes to pass the time,” recalls a Croatian artist who exchanged contacts with Majer in Zagreb last November. “She was very friendly. She included me in her web gallery, and she exhibited my works in Edinburgh. That was a big deal for me, because I rarely have the opportunity to exhibit my works abroad,” said Jure Kralj, a photographer from Maribor.

Ludvig Gisch used an Argentine passport that said he was born in Namibia in 1984, according to a copy obtained by the Guardian. He ran DSM&IT, a company that offers software for organizing email inboxes, blocking viruses, malware and spam. His Twitter profile has only three followers, one of which is Giš, and the other two are his wife’s gallery accounts. A friend of the couple who tried a trial version of Gish’s software said he doubted anyone would pay for such a service. “I wasn’t very impressed. It was five years behind current technology in Europe or even anything made in Russia,” said a friend.

Stock of cash

Like his wife, Giš often traveled across the border for work. His social media profiles reveal that he attended CloudFest 2022, a conference in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, which brings together thousands of senior executives working in the field of cyber security.

The large amount of cash found during the search of the office could indicate that the duties of the arrested Russian spies included paying Russian informal agents or informants. Moscow sometimes uses illegals for these types of tasks, as legal intelligence officers working in embassies could be subject to routine surveillance and thus risk exposure to sources.

Elena Vavilova, a former SVR illegal, said in a 2019 interview that the ideal illegal is someone who looks average, doesn’t attract attention, and doesn’t crave external approval. A couple in Slovenia seem to fit this mold perfectly. “She looked very average. I don’t believe she could be a spy“, said a Slovenian artist who met Majerova and her children several times.

The couple spoke Spanish and English, claiming that the Slovenian language was too difficult for them to master. “I speak Spanish well and I didn’t hear that she had an accent when she spoke in Spanish. They were ordinary nice people, there is no way they were spies. I think the media made everything up“, concluded a neighbor of the arrested couple.

(WORLD)