LONDON - When the government of Malta - a small clutch of islands in the Mediterranean Sea with a total population of under half a million - decided to establish its new embassy to the European Union, it knew it had to lavish big sums of money on the project
The only snag is that, according to a clutch of recent allegations made public in Brussels, Western intelligence services have suspected for more than a decade that Malta's iconic building was being used by China to spy on European Union communications. It spent lavishly on redoing the building and on the installation of a"high security system and a communication link-up" between Valetta, the Maltese capital, and Brussels, as the Times of Malta, the country's top daily newspaper reported at the time.
And that's when China stepped in with an offer of a"cooperation agreement" signed in 2006, under which Beijing donated furniture and other internal fixtures to the newly built embassy. These activities, claimed the French daily,"could, according to Belgian intelligence, be lasting today". Some reports claim that British security services first alerted the Belgians about the alleged goings-on in the Maltese embassy, while other reports claim that the Belgian themselves grew suspicious.
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