Chinese Canadian Woman Arrested in Belgium on Suspicion of Spying at NATO Headquarters

According to Reuters, Belgian authorities arrested a Chinese Canadian woman in Mons on July 24 on suspicion of spying for a third country within NATO’s military command structure and participating in a criminal organization. The woman had previously held an information technology position at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, known as SHAPE. On July 28, a Belgian investigating judge denied her request for release and ordered her to remain in custody for at least another month while the investigation continues.

Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office did not identify the suspect in its July 25 statement, saying it would make no further comment because the investigation remained ongoing. The woman has therefore not been officially named by Belgian authorities. However, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) identified her this week using publicly available digital information. Reuters previously referred to her as “Claire Z.,” while the European investigative outlet Follow the Money published similar identifying details.

Public records show that her career included a number of positions involving Canadian government security and sensitive information technology. In 2017, she worked for six months as a data scientist at the National Research Council of Canada. From April 2018 to October 2022, she worked as an economist at Statistics Canada. In May 2022, she began working as a systems engineer at the Canadian Space Agency.

She also claimed to have worked as a policy analyst at the European Space Agency and in the World Trade Organization’s Economic Research and Statistics Division. In addition, she served on several mirror committees of the Standards Council of Canada. She received a master’s degree from the University of Ottawa in 2022.

The investigation found that in January 2019, the woman submitted two nearly identical applications for the same Canada Border Services Agency recruitment examination. The applications were filed only 13 hours apart using university email addresses registered under two different arrangements of her name.

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She was subsequently invited under both applications to take a standardized examination and sign confidentiality agreements. At one point, the CBSA instructed her to re-sign one of the documents using her full legal name. She complied without asking any questions and then took the same examination twice within a 24-hour period, violating the testing agency’s mandatory 180-day waiting period for retaking the test.

After the testing contractor discovered the duplicate registrations and the CBSA directly asked whether she had submitted two applications, she provided only one application number.

Federal Court records show that Zhang unsuccessfully challenged a Public Service Commission decision finding that she had committed fraud during a Canada Border Services Agency recruitment process. The court dismissed her application for judicial review in 2024, leaving the commission’s finding in place. The dismissal came approximately 11 months before she began working at NATO headquarters.

Despite the finding, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police subsequently completed security screening for her and approved her appointment. Global Affairs Canada ultimately issued the security clearance required for her to work at an international organization.

As of publication, Canadian officials had declined to say whether the fraud finding appeared in her security screening records.