Did China use Malta's EU embassy for spying?

Belgian secret services have been worried “for years” that Dar Malta has been harbouring technical means installed by the Chinese to spy on European institutions, according to French daily Le Monde.  The French news outlet wrote that suspicions stem from a renovation project ahead of the 2007 opening of Malta's EU embassy. Suspicions about Chinese spying were first transmitted to the Belgian authorities around 2010, Le Monde said. The alarm was reportedly sounded by British intelligence, who said Chinese secret services were involved in the Maltese embassy’s renovation.  Furniture and certain fittings for the prominent embassy in Brussels, which is a stone’s throw away from major EU institutions, were shipped from China to the Belgian capital as part of a $300,000 cooperation agreement. A Times of Malta source said the agreement was not specific to the Dar Malta project. The source said that all wooden furniture donated by the Chinese had been thoroughly scanned prior to installation.  As a precaution, televisions donated by the Chinese that could be connected to a power source were not installed, the source said.  "To the best of my knowledge, no Chinese officials every went...