Belgian Prosecutors Charge Eight In Huawei European Lobbying Investigation

On 4 April 2025, POLITICO report­ed that Bel­gian pros­e­cu­tors have charged eight indi­vid­u­als with cor­rup­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion relat­ed to Huawei’s lob­by­ing activ­i­ties in Europe. The arti­cle begins:

The Bel­gian pros­e­cu­tor has charged eight peo­ple with active cor­rup­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing and crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion in an inves­ti­ga­tion into Huawei’s lob­by­ing activ­i­ties in Europe, it said in a state­ment on Fri­day. The deci­sion comes three weeks after police raids in Bel­gium and Por­tu­gal, as part of a probe into sus­pect­ed ille­gal pay­ments by the Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy giant to secure sup­port from Euro­pean law­mak­ers in the com­pa­ny’s inter­ests. Police author­i­ties also searched Euro­pean Par­lia­ment offices in Stras­bourg. Out of the eight sus­pects in the case, three were ini­tial­ly held in pre-tri­al deten­tion and are now under elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance fol­low­ing appeals, accord­ing to the state­ment from the pros­e­cu­tor. Two oth­ers were released “under con­di­tions,” it said. The remain­ing three are still in prison — two are appeal­ing, while the third may still do so…

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Key Points:

• The charges fol­low police raids con­duct­ed three weeks ago in Bel­gium, Por­tu­gal, and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment offices in Strasbourg.
• Three sus­pects have been released from pre-tri­al deten­tion and placed under elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance after appeals.
• Two addi­tion­al sus­pects were released with con­di­tions, while three oth­ers remain impris­oned with ongo­ing appeals.
• Huawei has respond­ed by stat­ing it “takes these alle­ga­tions seri­ous­ly” and main­tains “a zero tol­er­ance pol­i­cy towards corruption.”

On 13 March 2025, GIOR report­ed that Bel­gian author­i­ties had con­duct­ed raids tar­get­ing cur­rent and for­mer Huawei lob­by­ists as part of a major cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged bribery of Euro­pean Par­lia­ment mem­bers. Bel­gian intel­li­gence had iden­ti­fied Huawei’s lob­by­ing oper­a­tion as a poten­tial con­duit for Chi­nese state influ­ence with­in EU deci­sion-mak­ing bod­ies, rein­forc­ing long-stand­ing warn­ings from West­ern secu­ri­ty experts about the company’s opaque own­er­ship struc­ture and its sus­pect­ed ties to China’s mil­i­tary and secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus. These con­cerns gained renewed urgency after Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine, when for­mer Huawei employ­ees report­ed being instruct­ed to coor­di­nate more close­ly with the Chi­nese mis­sion to the EU.

Yet despite expres­sions of con­cern from the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, only 12 of the 27 EU mem­ber states have imple­ment­ed bans or restric­tions on Chi­nese ven­dors in their 5G networks—an out­come that under­scores the strate­gic effec­tive­ness of China’s lob­by­ing efforts in Brus­sels and beyond.

For GIOR cov­er­age of Huawei-relat­ed influ­ence activ­i­ties, go here.

Dis­claimer: The GIOR uti­lizes AI to gen­er­ate sum­maries of news items, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion and the key points that fol­low. Any text fol­low­ing the key points is con­text added by GIOR edi­tors. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real-world” photography.