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
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.
Is Huawei’s HarmonyOS 2.0 strong enough to take on Android?
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.
The Polish defendant, Piotr D., had worked for years in the top echelons of government, and is accused of “offering himself as a source of information” regarding public administration.
Both men deny any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors say that the cybersecurity specialist, who has asked that his last name be withheld under privacy rules, informed Wang of a monitoring system to guard against intruders accessing classified information sent through fibre optic communication networks created by Warsaw military university.
05:22
Huawei founder on cybersecurity and maintaining key component supply chains under US sanctions
Wang’s lawyer, Bartlomiej Jankowski, said prosecutors had no proof of any spying activity by his client.
“There is no evidence of anything illegal,” he told Reuters.
Huawei, which fired Wang after his arrest but has helped finance his legal fees, told Reuters in a statement last month that its activities are “in accordance with the highest standards of transparency and adherence to laws and regulation.”
US Relations
The administration of then US President Donald Trump had praised Poland for the arrests, with former vice-president Mike Pence saying in 2019 that they demonstrated Warsaw’s commitment to ensuring the telecommunications sector was “not compromised in a way that threatens our national security”.
At the time, Warsaw was seeking to convince the United States to increase its military presence in Poland, alarmed by increased Russian assertiveness.
Huawei’s IC design unit is losing the 5G chip market to MediaTek, Qualcomm
Huawei said that its exclusion from 5G would mean an almost 44 billion zlotys (US$12 billion) loss for the Polish economy and a delay of 5G roll-out by a few years.
It has challenged Sweden’s ban on its equipment in 5G networks, where a verdict is awaited from a local court.
Romania’s government also approved a bill that effectively bars China and Huawei from taking part in the development of its 5G network in April, but it still needs parliament’s upper house approval, considered to be a rubber-stamp.