Features

The spy capital

Diplomats, civil servants, journalists and academics move around the European Union capital of Brussels without being what their credentials say they are

The Russian headquarters had become a platform for the entry into Europe of agents sent by the Kremlin
Diplomatic branches in Brussels:
in total, there are around 5,000 diplomats in the Belgian capital
Years in prison:
the proposed new punishment for the crime of espionage in Belgium

They have ac­cess to any type of event, raise their hands at press con­fer­ences and roam the bars and restau­rants usu­ally at­tended by of­fi­cials of EU in­sti­tu­tions and diplo­mats. In Brus­sels, spies qui­etly wan­der around with­out much trou­ble. With a lit­tle ef­fort, they can pre­tend to be pro­fes­sion­als from any field and enter wher­ever they want to ac­cess rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion. Jobs in acad­e­mia or in think tanks are also at­trac­tive hid­ing places for agents.

It is no se­cret that there are spies in Brus­sels, home to the EU and NATO. Every­one knows they are there and that their ac­tiv­i­ties are con­cen­trated in the Eu­ro­pean quar­ter, where not only in­sti­tu­tions, but also hun­dreds of or­gan­i­sa­tions, com­pa­nies and lobby groups have their head­quar­ters.

If it’s in­for­ma­tion you’re look­ing for, this is the place to get it. In the EU cap­i­tal, the par­ties that bring to­gether work­ers from EU in­sti­tu­tions, diplo­mats, jour­nal­ists and civil ser­vants at the end of the week in the well-known Lux­em­bourg Square, in the heart of the Eu­ro­pean quar­ter, right in front of the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment build­ing, are well known. It’s also not un­com­mon to spot a politi­cian among them.

This is where the peo­ple from the so-called “Brus­sels bub­ble” meet, those who work with EU in­for­ma­tion, and the re­laxed at­mos­phere is the ideal breed­ing ground for spies. It is no sur­prise, then, that the del­e­ga­tions of coun­tries and in­sti­tu­tions alert their diplo­mats and of­fi­cials to the issue.

Brus­sels is not just any city. It’s the venue with the sec­ond high­est num­ber of diplo­matic branches in the world, 184, and some 5,000 diplo­mats. Es­pi­onage in the EU cap­i­tal is not new, but it takes on spe­cial rel­e­vance in today’s geopo­lit­i­cal con­text marked by the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine and changes in in­ter­na­tional power re­la­tions.

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.

Fea­ture in­ter­na­tional

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