Chinese-Belgian national charged with espionage involving microchips
September 13, 2026 2 Comments
A CHINESE-BELGIAN NATIONAL and former senior employee at a now-bankrupt microchip manufacturer remains in custody in Belgium on suspicion of espionage involving semiconductors. The suspect, who worked for BelGaN, is accused of attempting to transfer specialized intellectual property and trade secrets involving gallium nitride semiconductors—a technology critical to next-generation civilian and military devices.
Identified only as H.L., the suspect is a 52-year-old dual Belgian-Chinese national who reportedly held a senior research position at BelGaN, a microchip maker based in Oudenaarde, East Flanders. The company was the last industrial microchip producer in Belgium, specializing in gallium nitride semiconductors. It was overtaken by a consortium of Chinese investors in February 2022 before declaring bankruptcy in July 2024.
H.L. was reportedly arrested by Belgian authorities on May 10 at Zaventem airport in Brussels, as he was preparing to board a flight to Beijing. He faces four charges: espionage, participation in a criminal organization, misuse of company assets, and unlawful disclosure of trade secrets. A second suspect, reportedly former BelGaN CEO Alan Zhou Zhen, remains at large.
Investigators suspect H.L. simultaneously served as a director of Gankool, a company based in China’s Fujian province. Financed by a Chinese investment fund, the company was established a few months after BelGaN’s takeover by a Chinese investment fund. Gankool allegedly produces the same microchip technology as BelGaN. H.L. is accused of illegally transferring BelGaN’s specialized intellectual property and trade secrets to the Chinese firm.
This case highlights a pattern Belgium’s State Security Service explicitly flagged recently, terming it “mirror companies”. The practice refers to cases where Chinese investors acquire promising but underfunded European technology firms. The investors proceed to extract the European firms’ technology and establish a parallel company in China that replicates production at scale—often selling off the original European firm afterward.
► Author: Molly Jones | Date: 13 September 2026 | Permalink
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Then the Chinese get on their high horse and institute a ban on the export of “Chinese” technology. The irony of this, of late, has been in Rare Earths, where most of “their” technology was swiped from the Japanese.
This case underlines an increasing problem – as China becomes an economic Superpower it is able to buy dual-use technologies outright, rather than needing to rely on traditional economic espionage. China can offer prices that companies of small economies, like Belgium’s, find difficult to resist.
Also the diminution of the US’s place in the NATO alliance may see a parallel isolationist break in the US civilian intelligence connections to Belgium. This means the CIA and FBI may offer less anti-China counter-intelligence economic advice to Belgian agencies than previously.
Pete
https://gentleseas.blogspot.com/