The ‘nice, ordinary’ family suspected of being Russian spies
Today in Focus
The Guardian
4.5 • 778 Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Guardian. |
| 0:07.7 | Today, how Russia's secret agents are being tracked down and found out. |
| 0:14.0 | The Guardian |
| 0:26.0 | Five years ago, an Argentinian couple and their two young children |
| 0:30.0 | moved into a quiet suburb of Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana. |
| 0:37.0 | She was called Maria, he was called Ludwig. |
| 0:40.0 | They had two young kids about seven and ten, |
| 0:44.0 | and they set up quite a pleasant life. |
| 0:48.0 | Maria set up an online art gallery where she sold works of art, |
| 0:55.0 | taking a commission, and Ludwig ran an IT company. |
| 1:00.0 | The Guardian's Sean Walker has spent time with people who knew the family. |
| 1:04.0 | Maria and Ludwig had told their new friends and neighbours |
| 1:07.0 | that a fear of street crime back home in Argentina had been the reason for their move to Europe. |
| 1:13.0 | And that they were enjoying the change of pace that Slovenia offered. |
| 1:17.0 | Everybody who met them thought they were very nice people. |
| 1:21.0 | The neighbours said they could often hear the kids playing in Spanish and in the Garden, |
| 1:27.0 | and nobody thought there was much strange about them. |
| 1:30.0 | But last December, all that suddenly changed. |
| 1:41.0 | Several police cars and groups of playing clothes, police and special forces descended |
| 1:49.0 | on the house where Maria and Ludwig lived. |
| 1:53.0 | They also staked out the office that they'd rented where they ran their gallery and company from, |
| 1:59.0 | and the pair of them were arrested in what was one of the biggest and most coordinated police operations in Slovenia's history. |
... |
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