Digital Sovereignty

Europe's Chip Spy Never Had to Hack Anything

Belgian prosecutors say a Belgan director fed gallium nitride trade secrets to GaNkool, a Chinese rival he ran on the side. No hack was involved.

Digital SovereigntyBy Servola Tech Desk2026-09-074 min read

AI-assisted, edited by humans. | Editor-in-Chief: Leon Soliman | Editorial standards

Europe's Chip Spy Never Had to Hack Anything

Photo: Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

A director with two employers and one set of trade secrets

Belgian federal prosecutors have placed a 52-year-old dual Chinese-Belgian national in pre-trial detention on suspicion of espionage, accusing him of transferring gallium nitride chip technology from Belgan, the Belgian semiconductor maker where he held a senior research position, to a Chinese competitor he simultaneously directed. He was arrested in May 2026 at Brussels Zaventem airport, prosecutors say, as he prepared to board a flight to Beijing.

Belgan built gallium nitride power chips, semiconductors used where standard silicon runs too hot or too slow, including electric-vehicle inverters, aerospace power systems and military electronics. The company went bankrupt in July 2024, putting roughly 400 jobs at risk, and Chinese investors subsequently acquired a stake and appointed managers. The suspect, prosecutors allege, used the access his role gave him to move Belgan's specialized intellectual property abroad.

The rival firm did not exist until he needed it to

The timeline is what makes this case more than a routine leak. According to Belgian prosecutors, the suspect simultaneously served as a director of GaNkool, a Hong Kong-based company manufacturing the same class of gallium nitride chips as Belgan. GaNkool was established only months after he joined Belgan, and was financed by a Chinese investment fund, prosecutors said.

The federal prosecutor's office put it plainly: the investigation may point to the unlawful transfer abroad of specialized intellectual property and trade secrets relating to the production of gallium nitride chips. The suspect faces charges of espionage, participation in a criminal organization, misuse of company assets and unlawful disclosure of trade secrets. He denies all of them, and a second suspect in the case remains at large. The Chinese embassy in Belgium did not respond to requests for comment.

Bankruptcy is where chip-sovereignty screening usually stops looking

Europe's export-control and foreign-investment screening regimes are built to watch solvent, operating companies: who buys a stake, who sits on a board, what technology crosses a border in a live commercial deal. A bankrupt company is a different animal. Once Belgan collapsed in 2024, its intellectual property, staff and licenses moved through insolvency administration, a process built around creditors and asset recovery, not technology-transfer risk.

Nothing in this case required a network intrusion or a stolen credential. The suspect already had the access his job gave him. What changed was the audience he could sell it to, and how little extra scrutiny a firm in administration attracts compared to one still trading normally. That gap, not a technical exploit, is what let a dual-use chip technology move to a fully-financed foreign rival built for the purpose.

What this means for any European deep-tech firm in financial distress

Insolvency is exactly the moment when a European company holding sensitive dual-use technology is least equipped to defend it. Administrators focus on maximizing recovery for creditors, not on vetting the loyalties of researchers who still hold institutional knowledge and system access. The Belgan case suggests that IP-protection protocols, not just physical or cyber security, need to survive a company's insolvency, including screening for staff who hold or take up parallel roles at foreign competitors.

For owners of capital-intensive hardware or chip businesses anywhere in the EU, the practical lesson is to treat insolvency proceedings as a security event in their own right: freeze and audit access to trade secrets before administration begins, not after a director has already boarded a flight.

Servola Journal

We do this for everyone trying to keep up with what technology is doing to our lives. The people who build it, and the people it happens to. The Servola Journal exists so that what we learn belongs to all of them.

Nobody pays us for this. No ads, no paywall, free to everyone. We just believe that understanding what's happening to all of us shouldn't depend on who can afford to pay for it.

If it gave you something today, tell us to keep going. Follow us, leave a like, or write a positive comment. We read every one, and they are what keeps us going.

Frequently asked questions

What is gallium nitride used for that makes this sensitive?

Gallium nitride, or GaN, chips handle power more efficiently than standard silicon at higher speeds and temperatures, making them valuable in electric-vehicle inverters, aerospace power electronics and military systems, all considered dual-use technology.

Has the suspect been convicted?

No. He is in pre-trial detention on suspicion of espionage, participation in a criminal organization, misuse of company assets and unlawful disclosure of trade secrets, and denies all the charges.

Is anyone else implicated?

Belgian prosecutors say a second suspect in the case remains at large. The Chinese embassy in Belgium has not commented.

Belgan's collapse did not just cost 400 jobs. It removed the one thing that had been protecting its chip technology: a functioning company with a reason to watch who had access to it. Any owner holding dual-use intellectual property should treat that gap as the real vulnerability, not the exception.

BelganGaNkoolGallium NitrideBelgiumChip EspionageEU Chips Act

Denmark Blocked Polymarket. So Did Two Neighbors.

Denmark DNS-blocked Polymarket on 19 August, the third EU country this year to act against it. There is still no single EU rule for prediction markets.

3 min read

AI Policy

Nvidia H200 Chips Are Now Arriving Inside China

ByteDance and Tencent have each received about 10,000 Nvidia H200 chips, the Financial Times reports - the first confirmed China deliveries since December's US clearance, and a signal for Europe's chip-sovereignty debate.

3 min read

Decisions

The Third Pivot Was the Warning Magic Leap Missed

Magic Leap filed a WARN notice for 193 layoffs effective 1 October 2026, its fourth strategic pivot after $4 billion raised. The lesson is the pattern, not the pivot.

4 min read

← All articles