Australians investigate Chinese telecom over suspected spy links

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), has admitted it is investigating an Australian-based subsidiary of a Chinese telecommunications firm because of its rumored links to China’s intelligence establishment. Several intelligence insiders see Huawei Technologies, based in Shenzen, China, as a covert arm of Chinese military intelligence. The company, which has business concerns in several countries around the world, has attracted the attention of American, Indian and British counterintelligence agencies, among others. As intelNews reported last December, in 2005 the government of India cancelled an initial investment of $60 million on its telecommunications superhighway by the Chinese company. In early 2008, the US government prohibited Huawei’s purchase of a significant amount of shares in US network security equipment maker 3Com, which supplies telecommunications hardware to the US Department of Defense. Later that year, Chinese networking investor Singtel Optus, a subsidiary of Huawei, placed a very competitive bid on the Australian government’s $15 billion project to build the country’s first unified national broadband network. Since then, however, ASIO says that some Australian workers in Huawei’s Sydney and Melbourne facilities approached Australian authorities and said they were suspicious of the company’s focus. In the past, Huawei has described such allegations as “ludicrous and inaccurate”.