The spy capital

The US, in­fil­trated in net­works

Javier Solana, high rep­re­sen­ta­tive for EU For­eign and Se­cu­rity Pol­icy be­tween 1999 and 2009, ad­mit­ted more than a decade ago that he had been no­ti­fied of a major power from out­side the EU spy­ing on him for sev­eral months while in of­fice, with­out him being aware of it. If the high­est com­mu­nity agen­cies can suf­fer such at­tacks, then any­one is a po­ten­tial vic­tim.

“There’s no way around it. You just have to as­sume that the Rus­sians and the Chi­nese are al­ways lis­ten­ing,” said US Am­bas­sador to Bel­gium Howard Gut­man. As Wash­ing­ton’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Brus­sels pointed out, Rus­sia and China have the largest net­work of spies, with the sus­pi­cion that both Moscow and Bei­jing have hun­dreds of agents de­ployed through­out the city.

When Gut­man ad­mit­ted that es­pi­onage was in­evitable, he knew what he was talk­ing about. His own coun­try does the same. The spy game in Brus­sels has many play­ers and the US and Is­rael are also part of it.

In fact, Gut­man him­self was called for con­sul­ta­tions by Bel­gium’s then In­te­rior Min­is­ter, Di­dier Reyn­ders, to ex­plain his coun­try’s es­pi­onage of EU in­sti­tu­tions and del­e­ga­tions of EU coun­tries: the US se­cret ser­vice had in­fil­trated in­ter­nal com­puter net­works and in­ter­cepted calls and emails.

Mass ex­pul­sions

Al­though the Bel­gian se­cu­rity ser­vices are not au­tho­rised to com­ment on the num­ber of spies in the coun­try, the Bel­gian media have said that a third of Russ­ian diplo­mats are ac­tu­ally in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cers. It comes as no sur­prise, then, that the Russ­ian em­bassy in Brus­sels is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion hub for Russ­ian in­tel­li­gence ser­vices, as a jour­nal­is­tic in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Bel­gian media out­lets De Tijd and Nieuw­sur re­vealed.

Al­though the Bel­gian gov­ern­ment ex­pelled more than 20 Russ­ian spies after the Ukrain­ian war began, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the two media out­lets con­cluded that there are still dozens of Russ­ian spies left in the Bel­gian cap­i­tal, and now with more work than ever, be­cause diplo­matic re­la­tions at the mo­ment be­tween Rus­sia and the EU are not ex­actly at their best.

The Russ­ian em­bassy in Brus­sels is lo­cated in Uccle, one of the city’s 19 dis­tricts, but phys­i­cally some dis­tance from the Eu­ro­pean quar­ter. This is an area where there are also other diplo­matic res­i­dences, so the build­ing presided over by the Russ­ian flag does not at­tract at­ten­tion from the out­side. How­ever, ac­cord­ing to the Bel­gian in­tel­li­gence ser­vices, the build­ing has been a gated com­mu­nity for years, even with school fa­cil­i­ties, apart­ments and strict in­ter­nal con­trols. The goal is to send en­crypted in­for­ma­tion di­rectly from there to Moscow. De­spite know­ing of its ex­is­tence, Bel­gium had not dared expel the Russ­ian spies it had de­tected in the coun­try until the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine. The rea­son was clear: Moscow would re­spond in kind, and it was bet­ter to be able to keep per­son­nel in Rus­sia.

Some­times it is also not so easy to know who the spies are – it is not al­ways Rus­sians… some­times Eu­ro­pean diplo­mats be­come agents of the Krem­lin. This was the case of Her­man Simm, for­mer head of the se­cu­rity de­part­ment of the Es­ton­ian Min­istry of De­fence, and Clement Van­den­borre, for­mer head of Bel­gian coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence. Both sent in­for­ma­tion to the Krem­lin for decades.

NATO is an­other key place for spies. It’s been just over a year since the last Russ­ian spies pos­ing as diplo­mats left the Al­liance’s head­quar­ters. After many purges by the At­lantic Al­liance, Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin closed the Russ­ian em­bassy to NATO. Ac­cord­ing to West­ern coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence ser­vices, the Russ­ian head­quar­ters had be­come a plat­form for the entry into Eu­rope of agents sent by the Krem­lin. That they were spies is no se­cret. This was ac­knowl­edged by NATO Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral Jens Stoltenberg him­self. “They were Russ­ian in­tel­li­gence agents,” the for­mer Nor­we­gian prime min­is­ter said, de­tail­ing that the in­for­ma­tion came from West­ern in­tel­li­gence ser­vices.

Al­though in the cur­rent con­text it may be hard to be­lieve, con­tacts be­tween the Al­liance and Rus­sia had been con­stant and fluid. For ex­am­ple, am­bas­sadors met at least once a year under the NATO-Rus­sia Coun­cil, and Moscow even had a venue in the for­mer head­quar­ters of the At­lantic Al­liance in the Eu­ro­pean cap­i­tal. This did not mean that NATO was not aware of the pres­ence of spies. On the con­trary: they es­ti­mated that at least half of their NATO-ac­cred­ited rep­re­sen­ta­tives were ac­tu­ally Krem­lin agents. The Al­liance sim­ply looked the other way.

Bel­gium is now car­ry­ing out a re­form of the Crim­i­nal Code that pro­vides for harsher prison sen­tences for both es­pi­onage and for­eign in­ter­fer­ence. The Bel­gian Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, Vin­cent van Quick­en­borne, jus­ti­fied the changes to adapt the sanc­tions to the cur­rent in­ter­na­tional and geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

Liv­ing with doubt

The de­ci­sion has not come out of nowhere. It was the pros­e­cu­tors them­selves who asked to amend the Crim­i­nal Code to have more se­vere pun­ish­ments for spies, given that the coun­try is a diplo­matic hub.

Ac­cord­ing to the new code, which is ex­pected to be ap­proved be­fore the sum­mer, the penal­ties for es­pi­onage are being raised to 10 years in prison and up to five years in the case of for­eign in­ter­fer­ence. In ad­di­tion, the new rules pro­vide for penal­ties for in­ter­fer­ence by a for­eign power in de­ci­sion-mak­ing processes in Bel­gium.