Chinese telecommunications company Huawei has fired one of its employees in Poland following his arrest there on suspicion of espionage. The group said it had “decided to immediately end its contract with Wang Weijing,” who works in Poland, because “this incident has had adverse effects on Huawei’s global reputation.“
“Huawei has always respected the laws and regulations in the country where it is (…) and requires all its employees to respect the laws and regulations of the country,” the Chinese group said in its statement, saying that Wang Weijing was arrested for “personal reasons”, without giving further details.
“A Pole and a Chinese citizen have been arrested on charges of espionage. The Chinese citizen is a businessman working for a major electronics group,” Polish Deputy Minister for Coordination Maciej Wasik said on Friday. Arrested on Tuesday, the two men are suspected of acting “on behalf of Chinese services and at the expense of Poland,”a spokesman for the minister added.
The Polish suspect, named as “Piotr D.” according to Polish public television, was an adviser to the Polish subsidiary of the French telecommunications group Orange.
Founded by a former Chinese army engineer, Huawei has already been blacklisted on suspicion of espionage in several countries including the United States, Australia and Japan, which banned it from building a high-speed the 5G internet network.
The Wall Street Journal revealed at the end of November 2018 that the United States launched a major awareness campaign among its allies about the potential danger of entrusting the Chinese giant’s infrastructure management, pointing out the risk of cyber espionage.
On December 1 Meng Wanzhou, the group’s finance director and daughter of its founder, was arrested in Vancouver, at the request of the United States. She was charged with using a shell company between 2009 and 2014 to circumvent sanctions against Iran, heightening tensions between China and Canada and intensifying suspicions surrounding the company.
