There is a curious phenomenon happening in Finnish national news that seems to be mostly in line with the new Cold War and China bad. There has been a few of these “evil Chinese spy network”-types of articles, but they all tend to be so ridiculous and full of brainworms that I haven’t had the spoons to post about them.

This latests one however motivated me to do this, mostly because it is a very good example of what the national news of a vassal state start to look like after the vassal status is set in stone. The “investigative journalism” unit at Yle (Finnish national news) that is reporting these is called MOT, roughly translatable to “what is to be proven”. In the past they have reported and made documentaries on mostly domestic issues like clear neglect or criminal cases, emphasising how their investigation reveals something sinister or hidden that is not publicly known. They have recently expanded to China Bad.

It starts with:

A Finnish-Chinese businessman acted as an intermediary in a spying scheme targeting NATO’s military secrets. He cautioned the journalist to not to look into the issue, hinting it to be too dangerous to do so.

The actual story:

In September 2020, the Estonian Security Police arrested a Finnish-Chinese businessman in the Port of Tallinn. At the same time, two Estonians were arrested.

All three were suspected of espionage-related crimes.

From these arrests began to erupt the spying attempt by the Chinese military intelligence on NATO.

Two Estonians were sentenced to years in prison. In the end, the Finnish-Chinese businessman was not accused of his involvement in the events.

The story goes on:

The recent MOT documentary has studied the steps of the man. According to information confirmed by MOT from several sources, he played a more active role in the case than previously reported in the public domain. It was he who introduced representatives of Chinese military intelligence to a convicted Estonian.

Yle does not publish the name of the man, as he has not been convicted of crimes.

The businessman warned the reporter not to investigate.

“You don’t understand how dangerous things you’re dealing with,” he said when MOT contacted him.

An ominous video of the businessman with his voice altered is added to the article at this point. Notice how the warning has now been repeated several times.

The article continues:

Headline: Job offer from China to a friend

Someone who knows the businessman is an Estonian consultant called Gerli Mutso. She is one of the three arrested in Tallinn.

Mutso is serving an 8.5-year sentence for supporting Chinese intelligence activities against Estonia.

Mutso says that she and the Finnish-Chinese businessman were friends. They visited Tallinn in 2016.

According to Mutso, she handled the man’s legal affairs through a Finnish law firm. They played golf together.

At the end of the same year, the businessman proposed new customers to Gerli Mutso from Beijing. “He told me that there is interest from the Chinese side and asked if I would be willing to talk to his Chinese acquaintances,” Mutso said by telephone from prison.

She says that the Chinese customers were interested in marine research. They asked Mutso to look for people who have knowledge of shipping and the environment. Mutso knew the appropriate investigator.

Gerli Mutso still denied working for the Chinese military intelligence, but the court had a different view.

Estonia’s Supreme Court has ruled that Chinese customers were actually employees of Chinese military intelligence.

They used the Western names Victoria and Philip. According to Mutso, the businessman was also involved in a meeting with Victoria in Beijing in 2017.

The name of the Finnish-Chinese businessman is hidden in the court documents. They only mention the mediator, whose share of the events continued for about a year.

MOT has however verified information about the role of the businessmen from several sources.

He says he is just a regular businessman. But how did an ordinary businessman end up as an intermediary in China’s attempt to spy on NATO’s military secrets?

Headline: Student to Finland in the 90’s

The businessman’s Finnish acquaintances describe him as intelligent and competent.

He officially moved to Finland in March 1993. He was in his 30s. The following year, he started his postgraduate studies in English at the Helsinki School of Economics.

The businessman has told his acquaintances that he was a university student in China at the time of the Massacre of Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 and was therefore forced to leave China.

According to acquaintances, the businessman lived in Russia before arriving in Finland. The information cannot be verified from official sources.

Many old acquaintances are willing to talk about the businessman to provide background information, but no one wants to give an interview in their own name. They do not want to be publicly attached to an intelligence investigation.

Headline: To Nokia to combat corporate espionage

After his studies, his career took a leap.

He got a job at the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia.

Nokia would not comment on its employees, but the businessman told Gerli Mutso, among others, that his work was related to safety.

“He was a member of the security team,” says a former Nokian interviewed by Yle.

He recalls that a man with a Chinese background who had been trained in commercial education was an exception to the team, which consisted mainly of former police officers.

Nokia’s security director in the early 2000’s also recognizes the man as a former colleague.

At Nokia, the man’s work was to combat corporate espionage and data leaks.

After Nokia, the businessman was proven to have dealt with the Chinese armed forces.

Headline: Military equipment for China

In 2010, the Finnish-Chinese businessman, through his company, hired Finnish Sisu Auto to provide export assistance.

Sisu’s off-road vehicles are classified in the ML6 category of defence equipment. This means that they may not be exported without an export licence. In the past decade, the Ministry of Defence granted Sisu’s SUVs twice for export licences to China for a product demonstration.

A third trade was also pending with China. However, the businessman was challenged by both the Finnish Sisu Auto and the Chinese customer.

The customer was Yanjing Auto from Beijing, that manufactures, among other things, Russian military vehicles under license to the Chinese armed forces. Yanjing Auto did not respond to Yle’s contact request.

Finnish Sisu Auto does not want to comment publicly on the dispute.

Headline: It was all about big money.

It is clear from the documents that the businessman agreed on the design work of the vehicles to Yanjing Auto, on behalf of a joint venture called Sisu Auto Hong Kong.

Suomen Sisu Auto, on the other hand, sought to cancel the agreement.

Gerli Mutso, who is in Tallinn’s prison, assisted the businessman in the dispute.

“It was about big money, four million euros, I think,” he says.

The missing millions gave birth to criminal investigations in both China and Finland. Both the businessman and the parent company of Sisu Auto took the matter to the police.

The businessman was charged with embezzlement and aggravated accounting offences in 2020.

The charges were dismissed because the parent company of Sisu Auto and the businessman settled their million-dollar dispute with an encrypted contract.

The event around Sisu Auto took place mainly in the same years, during which Gerli Mutso got to know the Finnish-Chinese businessman and his Chinese acquaintances.

China sought information about NATO

It is not known when the man’s contact with the Chinese military intelligence was established. However, according to MOT, the man has been aware of who he was assisting.

In the end, the businessman and Gerli Mutso were both just middlemen in the Chinese operation. The actual target was the marine scientist Tarmo Kõuts.

He was also arrested in Tallinn in September 2020. Until his arrest, he served as Estonia’s representative on the scientific committee of the NATO base of La Spezia and had access to classified information.

Kõuts was sentenced to three years in prison, although he never handed over any classified information.

“Be very careful.” -Finnish-Chinese businessman

Finnish intelligence expert and university teacher Jyrki Isokangas considers the espionage attempt a typical personal intelligence operation.

“China’s intelligence has clearly had a task that has been linked to NATO and the Arctic,” he said.

According to Isokangas, Chinese legislation obliges citizens, if necessary, to assist intelligence and security services.

Headline: New company

Today, the businessman runs a Chinese-led company in Southern Finland. The yard of the company in an industrial area is full of containers with data servers.

Many people who know the company say that it is about mining bitcoins.

The businessman can’t be found, but he’s answering the phone. He denies cryptocurrency mining and says the company is focused on the energy business.

He finds it unreasonable that he is still being harassed with questions about his role in China’s attempt to spy on NATO’s encrypted information. “I can’t speak a word of that.”

However, the businessman again warns about investigating the matter: “Be very careful. You can understand this as advice, he says in English. You have been manipulated.”

He says he can’t answer the question of who the manipulator is.

He also does not answer the question whether he has been blackmailed or forced to act as an arbitrator to Chinese military intelligence: “Good try, but I won’t comment.”

And there it is, supposedly great investigative journalism that isn’t worth the worst sort of tabloid slop and yet this stuff is being published in the national news at an increasing pace. As far as I can see, there isn’t really anything here that looks concrete. Looks like a nothingburger.

What this looks like however is joining Estonia in criminalizing contact with the Chinese and framing it as un-patriotic. A whole lot of framing this like the Chinese person is an enemy within, in exactly the same way Russian people are framed and have been framed in the past. If a Russian person bought a house in Finland, it would get framed as getting invaded basically.

All in all, so very unserious and embarassing. Finland is probably not the sort of international power that the Chinese would be particularly interested in.