Belgian prosecutors this week announced the arrest of a Canadian intern for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who was accused of espionage.
Media investigations soon revealed the suspect is a Chinese-born Canadian national who was allegedly spying for China.
The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it made the arrest based on a tip from NATO security services, who warned the female suspect was spending an excessive amount of time at sensitive NATO facilities and asking too many questions.
The suspect was employed as an intern at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), which is located in the city of Mons, Belgium. SHAPE handles planning and execution for all NATO operations.
“She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization,” prosecutors said in a statement released Saturday.
The suspect’s home and workspace in SHAPE’s information technology department were raided when she was taken into custody. On Tuesday, prosecutors extended her pretrial detention by one month and the suspect immediately filed an appeal.
Canada’s CBC News on Wednesday identified the suspect as Biwei Zhang, a systems engineer who previously worked for the Canadian Space Agency and Statistics Canada. She has also used the names Claire Zhang and Catina Zhang.
CBC said Zhang’s personal and professional profiles matched the limited information provided by Belgian prosecutors, as do numerous posts she made on Facebook and LinkedIn. A group of European news outlets reached the same conclusion about her identity.
Zhang appears to be 32 or 33 years old and holds a master’s degree from the University of Ottawa, class of 2022. She reportedly worked as an economist for Statistics Canada from 2018 to 2022, then took a job as a systems engineer for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in May 2022. Her resume also includes work as a policy analyst for the European Space Agency (ESA) and a researcher for the World Trade Organization (WTO).
To date, there have been no details of the allegations against Zhang from Belgium, Canada, or NATO, beyond the vague description of her alarming behavior and assurances from SHAPE that her questionable activities did not interfere with operational readiness. The week since her arrest was announced has included some awkward excuses about who was supposed to vet her for a security clearance and how thorough a job they did.
The ESA told Reuters on Thursday that Zhang’s position with the agency did not require a security clearance, but she was subjected to “standard human resources screening procedures.” The WTO declined a request for comment about her work history.
NATO officials said responsibility for security clearances lay with contributing member nations, which in this case would mean Canada. Canadian Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree said on Monday that national screening procedures would be reviewed to “get to the bottom of what happened.”
According to CBC News, there was a rather large red flag in Zhang’s background: the Public Service Commission of Canada in 2023 found that she “committed fraud in an application for a position at the Canada Border Services Agency by applying under two different names and emails and failing to later clarify whether she had submitted multiple applications.”
Canada’s Globe and Mail explained that Zhang “submitted applications from two e-mail addresses, one from York University and the other from the University of Montreal and twice wrote the same standardized exams in an effort, the commission found, ‘to increase her chances of being appointed.’”
Zhang requested a judicial review of this finding in February 2024, but it was dismissed by a federal court judge.
“I think the concern level would be very high in government. Everybody wants to know what happened. There are a lot of questions to be asked,” former Canadian national security adviser Jody Thomas told the Globe and Mail.
