A former senior executive at Belgian semiconductor company BelGaN has been arrested on suspicion of passing trade secrets to China, Belgian federal prosecutors have confirmed. The 52-year-old man, who led the company's research division, was detained in May at Brussels Zaventem airport as he was about to board a flight to Beijing, the city where he was born. He holds both Belgian and Chinese nationality and had been living in Leuven, a university city in the Flemish Brabant province.

At the heart of the case is a significant conflict of interest: while serving as a senior official at BelGaN, the suspect was simultaneously director of a Chinese company producing the same type of semiconductors — a firm that received funding from the Chinese government. Prosecutors are also seeking a second suspect, reported to be BelGaN's last director, Alan Zhen Zhou, who is believed to have played a role in leaking information. This mirrors a pattern that Belgium's State Security agency has previously warned about: Chinese companies investing in smaller Belgian firms with promising but underfunded technologies, then establishing so-called mirror companies in China to replicate and scale up that technology before selling off the original business.

The case is far from isolated. Belgium's federal prosecutors recorded around 15 espionage dossiers last year alone, a trend that is continuing into 2025. Kenneth Lasoen, a professor of intelligence and national security at the University of Antwerp, notes that espionage is widespread globally, but that certain states — he points particularly to Russia and China — pursue it with particular aggression, targeting not only political and military secrets but also economic and scientific knowledge. Belgium is an especially attractive target, hosting both European Union institutions and NATO headquarters, as well as a robust knowledge economy with cutting-edge university and corporate research.

Experts describe a range of tactics used to recruit sources: appeals to national loyalty, financial inducements, ideological persuasion, or outright coercion — summarised by American intelligence as the MICE framework (money, ideology, coercion, ego). In the BelGaN case, the alleged method was the infiltration of a company by someone holding a dual role, a tactic that can be difficult to detect before significant damage is done.

The case has prompted calls from Agoria, the federation representing Flanders' technology industry, for greater government support on knowledge security. The organisation's director pointed to the Netherlands' Knowledge Security Desk as a model worth replicating in Belgium — a body that advises companies on cybersecurity risks and provides background on foreign business partners. With espionage cases increasingly targeting private industry rather than just government institutions, the pressure on both companies and policymakers to respond is growing.