[Wash Examiner] Belgian intelligence confirmed it investigated whether China was using the Maltese Embassy in Brussels as a spy post.French newspaper Le Monde reported last week that Belgian state security suspected "since the early 2010s" that Chinese intelligence used the embassy, which is located next to the European Commission's headquarters, to eavesdrop on European Union institutions.
British intelligence reportedly told its Belgian counterparts about the spying after a Chinese firm was involved in renovations of the embassy.
If Chinese intelligence infiltrated the Maltese Embassy, the EU was not told about it, a top diplomat said last week. But Belgian intelligence said this week that the alleged espionage had been investigated.
"There were Chinese people who were involved in the renovation of the Dar Malta embassy in 2007, and it caught our attention," Belgium's homeland security service, the Veiligheid van de Staat, told EUobserver on Monday.
The security service said suspicions arose "without a foreign service having drawn our attention to this fact."
"There has never been any evidence that Chinese spy activities have [actually] taken place from this building, and we never said that was the case," it said.