The Veiligheid van de Staat (VSSE), the state security agency of the European country, is concerned about "possible espionage" at Alibaba's logistics base at a Belgian airport.
Belgian intelligence officials have been keeping an eye on Cainiao, Alibaba's logistics division, at the cargo airport in Liège for any signs of spying or other types of espionage concerning shipments made for Beijing, as first reported by the Financial Times.
The VSSE is eager to "detect and fight against possible spying and/or interference activities carried out by Chinese entities, including Alibaba," according to a statement issued to media outlets.
Alibaba was unable to respond to our inquiries concerning the current scenario. "We strongly deny the allegations... based on prior conjecture," a spokesperson for the mega-corp told CNN earlier. Cainiao complies with all rules and regulations in the countries where it operates."
Cainiao will be floated and spun out by the Chinese e-commerce and cloud giant within the next six to twelve months.
According to the FT, which cited "people familiar with the matter," the VSSE is worried about software systems that compile private economic data.
The VSSE informed the newspaper that China "has the intent and capability to use this data for non-commercial purposes" since China's national intelligence law forces Chinese organisations to share information with the government.
The logistics facility, which became operational in 2021, mostly deals with products that European customers have ordered through the online marketplace AliExpress. We believe that there is concern that Beijing, through Alibaba, may discover what sort of items are being shipped through the facility or potentially interfere with people's goods.
Cainiao apparently wants to increase the size of its airport warehouses by more than three times, from 30,000 square metres to 100,000 square metres. The negotiations between Alibaba and Belgium to host the logistics centre, according to Belgium's law minister Vincent Van Quickenborne, took place in "a previous century" and that "times of naiveté have changed."
The espionage fears coincide with new warnings from Western nations about Chinese espionage and data theft.
Chinese spies are believed to have broken into Outlook and Exchange Online accounts hosted by Microsoft over the summer and stolen more than 60,000 emails belonging to US government personnel.
US and Japanese government agencies issued a warning late last month that Beijing's spies might be lurking in Cisco routers and using that access to collect organisations' IP and other sensitive data.
In the meantime, FBI Director Christopher Wray has frequently warned that China has 50 cybercriminals for each infosec operative employed by the agency.
However, China reversed course and claimed that the US had broken into Huawei systems and stolen data going all the way back to 2009.
