As in Hamlet of Shakespeare, there is something rotten about the Kingdom of Denmark. But in this case it is the great foreign powers who seek to know everything about this country of six million inhabitants. This is the conclusion of this very official Danish police intelligence report. 32 pages of report, online since Thursday, January 13.
Danish services say espionage has increased sharply in recent years. And it takes all possible forms: theft of technology, harassment, influence peddling, even attempted assassination. According to the report, China is the most involved and it focuses on economic espionage: obtaining information on advanced technologies, biotechnologies where Denmark is at the forefront, and raw materials, especially in Greenland, an attached territory. in Copenhagen.
The Danish services point out in particular the role played by students and teachers in the context of university exchanges with China. Last summer, the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken had also revealed the recruitment of 30 Danish researchers by the Chinese programs.
Other countries are involved: Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia. But they don’t all work in the same way and are not all interested in the same thing. According to the report, Russia is doing more traditional espionage, and has placed several intelligence officers, under diplomatic cover, in its embassy in Copenhagen. These officers seek to recruit Danes, especially those with access to classified documents, for example on defense matters.
Iran and Saudi Arabia, for their part, are more interested in hunting down opponents of their respective regimes. For example a few months ago, an Iranian opponent in exile in Denmark was the target of an attempted murder. An Iranian-Norwegian binational was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison.
At the same time, the former Danish intelligence chief has been in prison since early December. And in this opaque file, this time it is the American espionage which is in question. Lars Findsen, that’s his name, has one hell of a calling card. He headed police intelligence (the service that just published a report) and then military intelligence. He was arrested on December 8, charged with high treason, and he made his first public appearance on Monday, January 10, in the box in court, during a very brief hearing. Time for him to proclaim his innocence and time for the judge to go into complete camera.
In fact, Findsen is suspected of being transparent. He may be the man who last year reported to the Danish media about a much-talked-about scandal: the use by the US listening services, the NSA, of Danish stations to place wiretapping several European leaders, including Angela Merkel. The case, worthy of Legends Office, created a bad atmosphere between Washington and the Europeans. And it, too, fuels the feeling that Denmark is a hub for espionage.