Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Els Van Hoof targeted by Chinese spies, Minister Van Tigchelt wants security officer in parliament

In addition to Van Hoof, it emerged last year that Ecolo MP Samuel Cogolati was also a target of the same hacker collective. But besides Van Hoof and Cogolati, Belgium has 3 other members at IPAC: Georges Dallemagne (Les Engagés) and European Parliament members Hilde Vautmans (Open VLD) and Guy Verhofstadt (Open VLD).

Dallemagne tells VRT NWS that he has also turned out to be a target of the same hackers. He also learned this through the FBI. However, he has found no trace of the email to which Van Hoof refers. During 2021, he did receive a suspicious voicemail message in Chinese, which, according to the politician, was about a package. He also recorded that voicemail in video and transferred it to State Security. He did not receive any additional information afterwards.

“The services of the European Parliament have assured us that the hacking attempt did not affect any European Parliament members,” Hilde Vautmans responds. Both she and Verhofstadt were informed of the cyber attack by IPAC. So they would not have been able to penetrate the computer.