- Marine scientists Tarmo Kõuts have been spying for China since 2018, Estonian prosecutors said.
- Sources say that China’s efforts to infiltrate European institutions are still growing than Russia’s.
- One common tactic is that Chinese spies use business conferences and academic forums to conduct espionage.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Intelligence officials across Europe were concerned about the news that a leading scientist in the Baltic states had been convicted of spying for China.
Sources who spoke to Insider said the case was part of a long, worrying trend that China was trying to infiltrate institutions across the continent, and in some cases displacing Russia as their most obvious opponent.
The reason was the sentence of Estonia on Tarmo Kõuts (57) to three years imprisonment. Kõuts had close ties with the Estonian army and reportedly worked on several sensitive projects.
The arrest and conviction were first reported by the Daily Beast. ERR, Estonia’s public broadcaster, also discussed the matter.
Prosecutors said Kõuts began spying for China in 2018 and was secretly arrested last September. According to reports provided to the media by Danish government officials, he received about $ 20,000 and several luxury trips.
Insider spoke to three European intelligence officials, two from Western Europe and one from a Baltic state. Everyone asked anonymously because they did not have permission to inform the media. Their identity is known to Insider.
They describe a counter-intelligence environment where China often poses the greatest espionage threat to European institutions.
The Baltic official said: “Russian intelligence activities are of course the highest priority in our area, but the amount of resources needed to monitor China is increasing for us every year. Our natural experience is more with the Russians, but we has been warning for more than a year. “
In February, Lithuania announced a ban on the use of Chinese security software contractors. Around the same time, Estonian officials warned that China and Russia posed similar threats.
An official in Belgium told Insider: ‘It’s been building for about five years. We first saw a large increase in activity in Brussels, because it was clear that [China’s] EU mission is used as cover. In 2019, it became clear that the Chinese had committed as many as 250 intelligence officers to various EU and academic missions. ‘
French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R.)
Getty
A February 2019 report by EU foreign policy officials states that at least 250 Chinese spies and as many as 300 intelligence agents from other countries are operating in Brussels.
“That was when we realized that China not only had the most spies, but that it was possible that most of the spies were Chinese,” the Belgian official said.
In January 2020, media reports revealed that a German top envoy – along with two German lobbyists – was being investigated by German prosecutors, a case that is apparently underway in Germany’s privacy-oriented legal system.
And in April, European universities were warned that China was using academic exchanges as coverage for intelligence-gathering activities.
A third NATO intelligence official said the case in Estonia – where Chinese agents used the cover of conference trips and academic institutions to recruit, track down and even reward Kõuts – was typical of the Chinese playbook.
“They like the academic institutions,” said the official, who could not be named in the press. ‘China places a strong emphasis on the collection of intellectual property, scientific research and industrial techniques as opposed to the Russians who focus more on the traditional collection of secret information.
“This means that the work is often done in more comfortable conference settings, where it is easier to recruit. And the reward is easy to cover … Luxury travel disguised as academic conferences, fine dining or prostitutes at the legal conferences , it’s pretty easy to work assets this way. ‘