BelgaFrank Creyelman
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 10:55
A Belgian politician from the far-right party Vlaams Belang worked for more than three years as an informant for the Chinese secret service. This is evident from hundreds of text messages obtained by the newspapers The Financial Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde. These were sent between 2019 and 2022.
This concerns Frank Creyelman, MP of Vlaams Belang and group leader of the Vlaams Belang faction in the Mechelen municipal council. He is said to have been pressured by Daniel Woo, an intelligence officer from the spy agency of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
According to the newspapers, he had to influence discussions in European politics for three years. For example, in one of the text message conversations, Woo asks Creyelman to smear a researcher. The expert on the Uighur Muslim minority had contributed to revelations about how China is holding hundreds of thousands of Uighurs captive in the Xinjiang region.
The Belgian was also asked to influence discussions during discussions about Covid and China’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. For example, Creyelman and Woo discussed the possibility of influencing a Catholic cardinal to warn against the politicization of the corona pandemic, when China was under pressure as a result.
Division Europe and America
The Belgian also had to play Europe and the US against each other from China. “The aim is to sow division in the European-American relationship,” Woo wrote in a message. Creyelman then convinced two Vlaams Belang members of the European Parliament to make statements just before a visit by German Chancellor Scholz to China about how the United States and the United Kingdom were undermining European energy security.
In exchange for the influence, Creyelman was paid, according to various text messages, including in crypto. The chairman of the Vlaams Belang, Tom van Grieken, says on X that Creyelman has been immediately excluded from the party. “His actions go against the purpose and essence, even the name, of our party. The only loyalty for nationalists can only be to their own nation,” he writes.
Creyelman himself was not available for comment, according to journalists from The Financial Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde. The same goes for Woo.
2023-12-15 09:55:09
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