For at least three years, from 2019 to 2022, a Chinese spy regularly exchanged messages with Frank Creyelman, a former Belgian MP (2007-2014). According to hundreds of messages obtained by Der Spiegel, the Financial Times and Le Monde, the intelligence officer, calling himself Daniel Woo, solicited the member of the Vlaams Belang (VB, a far-right Flemish party) to gather confidential information, approach potential sources and speak positively about the Chinese government.
Woo was an agent of the Zhejiang State Security Department, a provincial offshoot of the Ministry of State Security, Beijing's main intelligence service. He particularly intended to influence Europe's position on the Covid-19 pandemic, the oppressed Uyghur minority and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. For these various missions, Woo invited Creyelman to an all-expenses-paid beach resort in southern China and paid him in cryptocurrency.
In return, the politician leveraged his pro-Russia and pro-China connections within European and Belgian institutions. Some messages from the Chinese spy were passed on to his brother, Steven Creyelman, a VB MP in the Belgian Parliament since 2019, who then presented them to other politicians, almost word for word. In 2022, shortly before visits to China by President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Woo summed up one of the objectives of his influence operation in Europe via a text message to Frank Creyelman: "Main idea is to attack European leadrs and make US sick."
A few hours after these revelations, on December 15, 2023, Frank Creyelman was expelled from the VB by the party leadership. When questioned about this foreign espionage, Belgian authorities claimed to have been aware of contacts between the former politician and "foreign powers," but were unable to prosecute him. According to Federal Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt, the Belgian penal code only punishes espionage in military matters. "This scandal has highlighted a gap in our judicial arsenal," said Samuel Cogolati, MP for the Ecolo party, speaking by telephone. "With the emergence of this affair, the justice minister has pushed for interference to be made a crime under Belgian law in the coming weeks."
In parallel with these debates, attention focused on Steven Creyelman, Frank Creyelman's brother and also a Belgian MP. Once this information was revealed by the press, the latter immediately distanced himself from Frank, denouncing a "betrayal" and describing his brother's relations with China as "disgusting and scandalous." However, based on other messages exchanged with the Chinese spy, the Belgian press has since established that Steven Creyelman could hardly have been unaware of his elder brother's close ties with Beijing.
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