Former Huawei employee accused of spying goes to trial in Poland as Europe weighs using Chinese 5G equipment

Former Huawei employee Wang Weijing and a former Polish secret services agent head to trial on charges of espionage, for which they were arrested in 2019

European states have been weighing the use of 5G telecoms equipment from the Chinese tech giant amid concerns about its use for spying, which Huawei denies

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Published: 10:22am, 1 Jun 2021Updated: 8:10pm, 1 Jun 2021

An espionage trial involving a former Polish secret services agent and an ex-employee of Huawei Technologies Co begins in a Warsaw court on Tuesday as some European states consider whether to exclude the Chinese group’s equipment from their 5G telecoms networks.

Poland arrested the two men in January 2019 on suspicion of spying for China, in a move that has ramped up international debate over the potential security risks of using Huawei equipment in communications networks.

Huawei has repeatedly denied its equipment can be used for espionage by authorities in Beijing, but the United States has been pressuring countries to ban it. In Europe, only Britain and Sweden have so far done so.

Polish prosecutors allege that Wang Weijing, 39, using the cover of being a Huawei executive, spent more than seven years spying for China trying to bolster the company’s ability to influence the Polish government and “enable it to … manage the state … technology infrastructure”, court documents show.

Wang, who has been in detention since his arrest, is also charged with recruiting a former Polish secret service agent who, prosecutors say, informed him about ways of influencing the country’s rescue and public safety services radio networks.