DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – The United Arab Emirates is strongly denying any link to an alleged spy ring uncovered by Oman, a neighbouring Gulf country.
A statement by the UAE’s foreign ministry says the nation is “shocked and surprised” by the claim and promises to assist Oman in any investigations. The statement was posted Monday by the state news agency WAM.
Oman on Sunday said it dismantled a spy ring linked to the UAE that targeted government and military operations.
Omani authorities have given no other details, but suggested that arrests have been made.
It marks a rare display of tensions between the close allies.
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:05 AM on 1st February 2011
A high-flying City banker gave his barrister wife and her friend
sensitive information on takeovers to help them make almost Ā£600,000
from insider dealing, a court heard yesterday.
The three invested more than Ā£2million in shares on the London Stock
Exchange between 2000 and 2008, netting a total profit of Ā£590,000.
Christian Littlewood, 37, worked for German investment bank Dresdner
Kleinwort Wasserstein from 1998 until 2007, when he was made redundant.
Christian Littlewood (left) invested Ā£2,150,000 and made a profit of Ā£590,000 for himself, his wife, Angie Littlewood (right) and a friend through inside trading
He was privy to inside information on takeovers and passed it to his wife. The court heard he didnāt just use information he had been given ā he also spied on colleaguesā computers and eavesdropped.
During his career he rose up the ranks, and was director of strategic banking by the time he left.
His expertise was in mergers and acquisitions and he passed on information about firms which were about to be taken over to his wife, Angela, 39, and her friend Helmy Saāaid, 34. Mrs Littlewood and Saāaid, owner of a juice bar, would invest in shares prior to takeovers, selling after the deals for a profit.
Southwark Crown Court heard that in March 2000 Littlewood began passing insider information to his spouse, a Singaporean national. She used her Singaporean name to trade, which was āconvenientā, as it could not be linked easily to her husband.
Littlewood, who was earning Ā£350,000 a year, including bonuses, in the last years of his employment, used knowledge he legitimately had, as he was āinsideā deals done through his bank.
Nicholas Dean, QC, prosecuting, said: āWhile Christian Littlewood was the instigator of the scheme, neither his wife nor Mr Saāaid needed much persuasion. They became active participants.
āOver a period of nine years they invested a total of Ā£2,150,000, making a profit of Ā£590,000.ā
Mr Dean added that over the period Littlewood had been involved with investments in 56 stocks, 50 of them involving his co-defendants. But the three are only being sentenced in relation to the eight counts on the indictment.
Following his redundancy, Littlewood began working for another bank, Shore Capital. He fed information from the first deal he was involved in to his wife and Saāaid. The Littlewoods, who have three children, were arrested at their London home on March 31, 2009.
Saāaid was held on the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte in May last year.
The couple pleaded guilty to eight counts of insider trading in October. Saāaid admitted the same charges just before trial on January 10. Lord MacDonald QC, defending Littlewood, said that, although his client ālit the touch paperā, he did not know the extent to which his wife and Saāaid were investing.
The three will be sentenced later this week. Saāaid is in custody and the Littlewoods are on conditional bail.
China used honeytraps and spying interns in industrial espionage, according to leaked French intelligence files.
One report claimed a top researcher in a major French pharmaceutical company was wined and dined by a Chinese girl and ended up in bed with her.
“When he was shown the recorded film of the previous night in his hotel room . . . he proved highly co-operative,” said an economic intelligence official.
In another case, an unnamed French company realized too late that a sample of its patented liquid had left the building after the visit of a Chinese delegation. One of the visitors had dipped his tie into the liquid to take home a sample and copy it.
Companies should do more to protect themselves from prying eyes among the 30,000 Chinese students who conduct internships in France, experts warned.
Among the most frequent methods cited by French intelligence is the so-called “lamprey technique”, which usually takes the form of an international tender for business. “The aim of the project is to attract responses from developed countries,” notes the report. When Western companies vie to respond, they are cajoled and “told to improve their technical offering”.
“Each (company) tries to outdo the other, once, twice, several times until the Chinese consider they’ve had enough.” Once key information has been gathered, the bidders are told the project has been shelved and the information is used by the Chinese to develop its own products.
A prime example was a recent multi-billion dollar tender to build China’s high-speed train. France’s TGV was a bidder. As part of the process, the French embassy in Beijing organized a six-month training course for Chinese engineers. Soon afterwards China brought out its own high-speed train remarkably similar to the TGV and Germany’s ICE train.
Another technique is the “mushroom factory”, in which French industries create a joint venture with a local Chinese firm and transfer part of their technology. Later local rivals emerge, “offer identical products and are run by the Chinese head of the company that initiated the joint venture”. A third technique is to turn the tables on a foreign firm by accusing it of counterfeiting. Schneider Electric was taken to court over a hook in its fuse box, which it patented in 1996. Its Chinese rival Chint started building the same hook, took Schneider to court in China for copying its design and Schneider was ordered to pay a $49.5 million.
Renault, the French carmaker is embroiled in an espionage scandal involving three top executives over allegations they were paid to hand over car secrets to a Chinese firm.
New York ā According to intelligence agencies, China is enlisting beautiful women for corporate espionage in the West. How does the dreaded “honeytrap” method work?
According to leaked French intelligence files, China has been employing beautiful female spies ā the dreaded “honeytrap” method ā and blackmail to steal business secrets from French executives. And it wouldn’t be the first time that China has used such tricks to gain access to privileged information. Here, a brief guide:
How does the “honeytrap” work?
A beautiful woman wines, dines, and even beds a mark to get information from him, a la many a Bond flick. The French intelligence reports cite a case in which a young Chinese woman slept with a top French researcher at a major pharmaceutical company, a man unaware that she was a spy and that the encounter had been videotaped. “When he was shown the recorded film of the previous night in his hotel room… he proved highly cooperative,” says an intelligence official.
Have other countries fallen victim to Chinese “honeytraps”?
Yes, in early 2010, Britain’s MI5 accused the Chinese government of using honeytrap schemes to hack into corporate British computer networks. Two years earlier, MI5 had distributed a document titled “The Threat from Chinese Espionage” to security officials, British banks, and businesses, explicitly warning executives of honeytraps and subsequent blackmail attempts: “Chinese intelligence services have also been known to exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships and illegal activities to pressurize individuals to cooperate with them,” it read. “Hotel rooms in major Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai which have been frequented by foreigners are likely to be bugged. Hotel rooms have been searched while the occupants are out of the room.”
What other means of espionage are the Chinese reportedly using?
Other techniques cited by French intelligence officials include the “lamprey” and the “mushroom factory.” The lamprey technique involves soliciting business proposals from Western countries, and then rejecting the applications, telling bidders that they need “to improve their technical offering”; the Chinese then use what they’ve learned from the bids to develop their own products. In a recent incident, France’s TGV bid on a proposed high-speed Chinese train project, and even arranged a six-month training course for Chinese engineers, only to watch China build its own train that looked “remarkably similar” to the TGV trains. In the mushroom factory technique, local Chinese firms partnered with French companies in a joint venture, only to be bested by local “rivals” that were actually run by the original Chinese firm. Danone, a French dairy company, reportedly fell victim to this trick.
Sources: Telegraph, The Times, Register, New York Times
NEWARK, N.J. ā State Police have taken over security at New Jersey’s largest sewerage authority after a small hole was found drilled into the executive director’s office.
Officials say the hole would allow anyone to eavesdrop on Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission director Wayne Forrest from a storeroom below.
The embattled agency’s chief financial officer Kenneth Pengitore abruptly resigned from his $163,869-a-year job Wednesday. Forrest also fired five other employees, including the wife and brother of a former commissioner.
Forrest said the actions were necessary to restore public trust and accountability.
The resignation and terminations followed the arrests Tuesday of three top-level executives. They’re charged with official misconduct for allegedly using employees to perform personal home improvements and repairs during work hours.
