A New Age “music therapist” who incorporates shamanism in her music performed a “ritual concert” in an active Catholic church in Spain.
Kuyay Santosha announced on her Instagram page that on September 18, she would be “performing an exclusive ritual concert at the historic Church” of Sant Pau del Camp, the oldest church in Barcelona, and one of its most famous.
According to Santosha’s website, her music is “connected to various ancestral wisdom traditions,” and her “song becomes a bridge between the invisible, the human, and the sacred.” Her “greatest source of inspiration” is “Mother Nature.”
The singer explicitly references shamanism as well as tantra in a description of her music: “The breath, the tantra, the meditation, the conscious touch, the dance, the shamanism, the ancestral songs, the voice guided by the soul: the most direct way back to myself. I’m here to share this Medicine with you.”
Pictures and a video clip of one of her performances show her shaking a fan-shaped bundle of dried leaves, the kind used during shamanic rituals.
Santosha acknowledged in one of her Instagram posts regarding the concert, “Being granted access to this venue is truly extraordinary and rare.”
Santosha was granted permission to perform in the church by its pastor, Father Joan Cabot Barbany. According to Médias-Presse-Info, Fr. Barbany has said he wants to be able to “marry” a same-sex couple at church.
The performer acknowledged in one of her Instagram posts regarding the concert, “Being granted access to this venue is truly extraordinary and rare.”
The Archdiocese of Barcelona website indicates that Fr. Barbany performs many church functions, as Médias-Presse-Info noted, despite his heterodoxy. On his X page, he recently shared a photo of an interreligious prayer service hosted at Santa Maria del Pi Church, where he also serves as rector.
Online profile photos and video footage indicate that Barbany doesn’t wear clerical garb except when he is offering Mass.
Police vehicles at the Bataclan Theatre after the terrorist attacks (November 2015).Wikimedia Commons,Maya-Anaïs Yataghène, CC-BY-2.0
A Belgian sentence-enforcement court is due to decide on September 29 whether Mohamed Bakkali, the man French prosecutors called the “superintendent of terror” for the November 13, 2015 attacks, can leave prison under electronic monitoring or on parole.
He has been locked up since November 26, 2015, when he was arrested in Belgium as part of the investigation into the Paris and Saint-Denis attacks. In France he would not have been eligible until 2035. In Belgium he has already had day release and overnight leave.
Bakkali, a 39-year-old Belgian-Moroccan from Verviers, eastern Belgium, was not one of the gunmen but helped with the logistics of several terrorist attacks.
He rented the Belgian safe houses and supplied vehicles used by the Islamic State cell that killed 130 people and injured more than 400 at the Bataclan concert hall, on the café terraces of eastern Paris and at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, north of the capital.
He exercised his right to silence during the trial and later said he had feared for his relatives.
In December 2020 a French court gave him 25 years for helping the failed Thalys attack of August 21, 2015.
On June 29, 2022 the special assize court of Paris gave him 30 years for the November plot, with a two-thirds minimum term. The two sentences were later capped at 30 years.
But, having Belgian nationality, he was sent back to Belgium on January 20, 2023 under a return clause and is held at Ittre, south of Brussels. He had been transferred to France on January 26, 2018 to stand trial.
Belgian law, not the French tariff, now governs how that sentence is served. That is the general rule under the EU framework on the mutual recognition of custodial sentences, which leaves enforcement to the country where the prisoner is held.
In Belgium, prisoners may seek conditional release after one third of the term.
A Belgian période de sûreté (minimum term) was written into statute in 2017, after the attacks, and does not apply to his case.
Bakkali has been eligible for a tag since August 8, 2023 and for conditional release since February 4, 2024, according to the French broadcaster CNews. Short prison leaves began in July 2025. In May the Brussels tribunal de l’application des peines granted six 36-hour furloughs against the prosecutor’s advice.
The court said he had been “calm and respectful”, had looked for work and lodging and had met victims.
The Brussels public prosecutor remains opposed to parole or a tag “at this stage” and has no right of appeal.
French justice minister Gérald Darmanin wrote on September 21 to his Belgian counterpart Annelies Verlinden that release after “only 11 years” would be “an affront to the pain of the victims” and “the opposite of both the letter and the spirit” of the French assize verdicts. The two ministers also spoke by telephone that day.
He asked that victims be able to follow the September 29 hearing by video and said the European rules on mutual recognition of sentences should be changed.
Verlinden replied on September 22 that the court is independent of the executive and the prison administration and would decide “in full autonomy”.
Belgian officials and the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) have already briefed victims at the Belgian consulate in Paris, on September 16. Some participants left before the end, CNews reported.
Some of those who sat through the ten-month trial say they thought the page had closed.
War fever is ramping up again across Europe. This has happened several times in the four and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, usually coinciding with important national elections — particularly those in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, and Germany — when certain domestic political parties have been demonized as “pro-Putin” and “security threats” to the rest of Europe. The war drums also get loud whenever increased military budgets are being debated within the governments of the Scandinavian and Baltic states, Finland, Germany, and Poland, as well as the European Commission. The ebb and flow of political battle cries against the Russian Federation track closely with Europe’s electoral and parliamentary calendars.
It is no coincidence that the German government decided to announce five days before Saxony-Anhalt’s September 6 elections that Russia was responsible for a small drone discovered at the Leipzig/Halle Airport over a month earlier. Although the drone carried an explosive charge, the device caused no damage and sat at the airport unnoticed for many hours on August 4. When Germany accused Russia of perpetrating the “attack” four weeks later, Berlin presented no real evidence for its conclusions.
Nevertheless, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and national leaders across Europe immediately declared solidarity with Germany and condemned Russia’s “hybrid war” on “European Union soil.” To many observers, Berlin’s finger-pointing appeared timed to dampen momentum for the “Alternative for Deutschland” political party, which German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the European Establishment have defamed as “Nazis” and “Russian puppets.” If that was Merz’s goal — to stave off election defeat for his political allies by falsely accusing his opponents of being Russian tools and spies — it did not work. The AfD decisively won the September 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, and support for the pro-national sovereignty political party continues to surge across Germany.
Similarly contrived “national security” incidents arose before elections in Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Moldova. Pro-European Union parties accused Russia of election interference, economic sabotage, or even imminent attack, while framing opposing parties as Russian assets. In the case of Romania, the E.U.-aligned courts annulled the 2024 presidential election due to spurious allegations of “Russian meddling.”
While European politicians predictably drag out the Russian bogeyman before every election, they seem to be ratcheting up their scaremongering in anticipation of the midterm elections in the United States. President Trump has made no secret of his belief that the Russia-Ukraine War is a stupid and unnecessary conflict that would have never happened had he been in office in 2022. For two years, he has attempted to end it. With the exception of Slovakia (and Hungary before former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat), European governments appear committed to an expanded war with Russia in the near future.
Just last week, President Trump asked Ukraine’s holdover-president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to refrain from attacking Russian oil refineries in an effort to stabilize global markets. After agreeing to do so, Zelenskyy did just the opposite and announced Ukraine’s use of NATO-supplied missile systems to target Russian facilities, an action presumably meant to provoke Russia into targeting NATO members directly. Ominously, Ukrainian “journalist” and Zelenskyy confidant Dmytro Gordon recently announced, “Literally within days, something will happen that will give us great hope.…I can’t say what it is — it’s a military secret. But I know that in the coming days…something will happen that will give the nation wings. I know this.”
Gordon’s promise that “something will happen” seems to be an open secret throughout Europe. European Commission officials are encouraging all four-hundred-fifty million European citizens to stockpile water, food, and medicine in preparation for war. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has told the Bundestag that war is coming, and Chancellor Merz has successfully worked around prior legal limits on — and substantially increased — defense spending, while acknowledging that Germany is “already in conflict with Russia.” Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are expanding the size of their respective militaries and implementing broader conscription programs. French President Emmanuel Macron has reportedly informed political leaders that war with Russia has arrived, and the British government is furiously revising its war manuals, organizing civil defense exercises, and preparing for large-scale military conscription, including the activation of retired servicemembers up to the age of sixty-five. In the last week, the United Kingdom’s top ten newspapers have published over two-hundred-fifty articles about the likelihood of war with Russia.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former cabinet minister and one-time Conservative Party favorite for prime minister, says that the British people must fight and die for their country: “In the next few years we may face a war, and if we face a war, we will need people who will join the armed services and who will go out and do their duty. We may even face circumstances where people have to die to save their country, as they did in the First and Second World Wars….That is something that makes a country survive. If people are not willing to do their duty, then the country will be taken over by another country.”
Rees-Mogg is a poncy toff with an aloof style of speech. While in Parliament, he was often ridiculed as the “Honourable Member for the 18th century.” So his insistence that ordinary Brits give up their lives for the sake of their country sounds remarkably out-of-touch.
According to Home Office records, an illegal alien is granted settlement or citizenship in Britain every single minute. British taxpayers are forking over more welfare payments to migrant households than ever before. Open defecation on public streets is so common that the U.K. must post signs warning the growing number of third-world immigrants that such behavior is inappropriate. The British government hands out a nine-page booklet to illegal aliens informing them that raping women and children is wrong. One British village has already voted to secede from the U.K. after the government insisted on housing a migrant camp ten times the size of the town right next door. The former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, recently warned the public that the government’s “climate change” and “green energy” obsessions have rendered the country weak and practically defenseless against its enemies. And instead of tackling any of these national security threats, the government has used its dwindling resources to arrest nearly 65,000 Brits for “speech-related offenses” over the last five years.
When ordinary people hear Rees-Mogg say that they must be willing to “do their duty” and “die” or Britain “will be taken over by another country,” they shake their heads in disbelief. One commenter asked, “So the UK government expects our young to die for them repelling Russian landing craft when it rolls out the benefits carpet for often dangerous invaders?” Another remarked, “A rich bloke who couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding, says we should do our duty and die, to protect a status quo that delivers him fine wine, and the rest of the country bills they can’t afford to pay.” And another insisted, “Kit him up and send him to the Donbas.”
An online pundit instructed, “Go and ask the migrants you brought in. Let’s see how British they are then. Because none of us are fighting for you.” One young man wondered, “[W]hat’s left to die for? Football? A home you can’t afford? A job you won’t get? A school that will teach your kids to hate you for fighting in the first place?” And another commenter concluded, “A country without borders is not a country, nobody is dying for a country that does not exist.”
Europe’s “ruling class” want to sacrifice citizens in a senseless war against Russia. Citizens should overthrow their “ruling class” instead.
Pakistani Christian Faraz Pervaiz posted a short video on X capturing Arab Muslim customers attacking a MacDonald’s in England, shouting “Allahu Akbar” and declaring that the fast-food restaurant is haram, or “forbidden.” This is the new normal in Europe.
Check out the short video below:
Arab Muslims attacked a McDonald’s in England, shouting “Allahu Akbar” and declaring that McDonald’s is haram. pic.twitter.com/QTJWN83045
A total of 21 men have been convicted in connection to Oxford grooming gangs, but survivors believe hundreds have avoided justice | THAMES VALLEY POLICE
Oxford grooming gang survivors and former police officers have said they believe “hundreds” of Pakistani rape gang perpetrators are on the loose in the ancient city.
Oxford was one of the towns and cities across Britain where most of the vile perpetrators were identified as older men of Pakistani heritage.
Twenty-one men have been convicted in connection with the Oxford grooming gang – but survivors say there are many more who have never faced justice.
One woman detailed how grooming gang members gave her cigarettes laced with heroin and sexually abused her from the age of 11.
More than two decades later, three men were found guilty of abusing her and were jailed for between five and 24 years in 2020.
She feels the sentence was not enough, saying “they should stay in there forever, because obviously they’ve taken my life”.
Another survivor told BBC Panorama she had seen a few of her abusers in her local area after choosing not to go through a police investigation.
She said: “It’s difficult because this is where I live, it’s where I grew up. There is a few of them that I’ve seen a few times, even just in the supermarket, driving around.”
“It’s crazy, it’s just ridiculous, the amount of people that were involved,” former senior detective Simon Morton, who led the first rape gang probe in the city, said.
“We should’ve done more. It’s tragic,” he said, adding that he thinks this type of abuse is “absolutely” still taking place in Oxford.
“We got the core group, that doesn’t mean there isn’t more. I’d like them all convicted, but identification is super hard.
“The girls were quite often drugged… thrown in a room with a mattress on the floor, and there’d be a procession of men going in all night, all day.”
A third survivor said many of her abusers are still free, adding that police did not initially believe her when she detailed the horrifying acts being done to her.
She said: “There are a lot of people out there who have been involved in this to some degree or another, that have just been allowed to get on with their lives that were involved in the sexual abuse of children.”
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said it works “tirelessly” to investigate grooming gang offenders and bring them to justice, adding it was “never too late to come forward”.
The first victim explained how her lifelong addiction had directly resulted from being provided heroin-laced cigarettes.
She explained how, after being provided drugs and alcohol, she would be told by grooming gang members she was now in debt and had to pay them back with sex.
“They’re like, ‘well you know, you owe me this money now, so you’re going to have to do this’,” she said.
“They used to say ‘drink this, drink that’ to the point where I’m throwing up and sick. Having to be in them houses and feeling trapped. They used to just lock us in.
“Then before you know it, there’s one, two, six, seven people turning up. You’re just outnumbered, basically.”
In a statement responding to the BBC Panorama documentary, Oxford County Council said: “The experiences of the victims and survivors featured in the programme are deeply distressing.
“The abuse they suffered was completely unacceptable and our thoughts remain with all those affected.
“Following Operation Bullfinch, a serious case review identified significant failings in how agencies responded. Oxfordshire County Council accepted those findings and apologised. The review led to major changes in safeguarding and multi-agency working.
“Today the council works closely with police, health and other partners to protect vulnerable children, support victims and survivors, and help bring perpetrators to justice.
“Protecting children remains our highest priority.”
Darren O’Callaghan, Assistant Chief Constable for Crime and Criminal Justice at Thames Valley Police said in a statement issued before the BBC report: “The impact of sexual abuse of children is lifelong, which is why it is vital that victims and survivors are able to share their lived experience of the abuse they endured.
“These women have bravely shared their experiences, highlighting the devastation these crimes cause over many years.
“To anyone who has experienced abuse, whether recently or many years ago, I want to be absolutely clear: we are here to listen, we are here to support you, and we will treat you with dignity, respect and compassion.
“If you come forward to report abuse, you will be taken seriously. We will listen to what you tell us, investigate thoroughly, and do everything we can to bring offenders to justice while ensuring you receive the support you need throughout the process.”
Evonik will cut 3,200 jobs worldwide between 2027 and 2029, 2,150 of them in Germany, the specialty chemicals group confirmed on Tuesday after a strategy meeting of its executive and supervisory boards.
The figures match a plan first set out in June under the “tailor Made” programme.
About 2,800 posts are already due to go by the end of 2026.
Taken together, the two waves remove close to 6,000 roles. Evonik employed 31,053 people at the end of 2025, almost 900 fewer than a year earlier.
Interim chief executive Claus Rettig said the board, the supervisory board and employee representatives shared one view: “We are in a structural and economic crisis in our industry.”
“We will use this polycrisis to change old structures and position ourselves better.”
Growth, the company said, looks stronger in Asia and the Americas, where further investment is under review.
The six large German production sites will each be given a narrower role. The share price rose by almost 5 per cent.
The next phase is meant to run without compulsory redundancies: Vacant posts will not be refilled, staff will be offered early retirement, and voluntary exits will be paid.
Evonik did not put a figure on the cost of the new round.
The first programme, which cut 2,800 jobs for about €400 million a year in savings, cost some €250 million.
Rettig said the latest one would “probably be more expensive”.
The company is also leaving businesses it no longer wants.
Global polyester, with about €150 million of annual sales and years of losses, will stop in 2027.
Witten, which employs 266 people, will close; Marl will lose 45 jobs and Shanghai 35.
Smaller plants in Hamburg and Bitterfeld, together about 90 staff, are also to shut.
Evonik plans to sell Oxeno and Syneqt, which together employ about 4,300 people.
Talks with investors on Oxeno are under way; a Syneqt sale process is due to start in 2027.
If those units leave the group as well as the job cuts land, the payroll could be about 10,000 smaller than at the start of the overhaul.
The German chemical giant’s sales was €14.1 billion in 2025, 7 per cent lower than the year before.
German chemicals have been under pressure from high energy costs, weak European demand and Asian competition.
The chemicals union IG BCE has already said that one savings programme after another creates no prospects. The industry association VCI has spoken of no “sense of departure” for German chemicals as a whole.
In Germany, the chemical and pharmaceutical industry is currently the third largest industrial sector with over 476,000 employees.
More than 2,200 pro-lifers gathered on Saturday for the Swiss March for Life, defying hostility from local officials as well as an estimated 200 masked cyclists who attempted to disrupt and terrorize the event.
EWTN News reports that an estimated 2,200 pro-lifers, accompanied by a police presence to ensure security, rallied under the theme of “Together for Life,” advocating legal protection for the voiceless preborn as well as for fathers to step up to their responsibilities both to their children and the babies’ mothers.
Lamenting the abortions of 200,000 preborn babies since 2002, Swiss March for Life president Beatrice Gall said the March is an effort to help counteract the fact that “there is no public debate and no objective examination of the facts; instead, people remain silent about the high abortion rates, the suffering this causes many people, and the consequences thereof.”
“Advocating for human life is not backward — it’s forward-looking!” she added, taking a “new wave of interest and strong commitment” from young people as a hopeful sign for the future.
Far-left saboteurs attempted to undermine the demonstration with firecrackers, knocking over trash bins, and otherwise blocking the route at multiple points. “The police repeatedly asked them to leave before resorting to the water cannons,” SWI adds. “However, the counter-demonstrators reappeared at several points along the route.”
For years, Zurich officials have kept the event out of the city center, relegating it to the outer commercial and residential district of Oerlikon. Officials have claimed this is to minimize such disruptions, but pro-lifers argue they are held to a double-standard that effectively gives violent agitators power to decide who is welcome in the public square. Pro-lifers argued that the authorities’ success in managing the counter-protestors undermined the case for keeping the march out of the city center.
“Abortion is a severe matter, and it deserves to be touched face to face, in a loving way,” ProLife Europe’s regional director for Switzerland, Jonas Streule, told the crowd. “We rarely leave a conversation without having made someone think about an opinion they simply adopted from the dominant culture.”
This is far from the first year Swiss pro-lifers have had to worry about pro-abortion violence for merely speaking out. As LifeSiteNews reported at the time, the 2020 March for Life was canceled after police warned that up to 1,000 counter-protesters planned to block the March. Earlier that year, a partner organization found an animal carcass and maggots in its mailbox, and the year before counter-protestors had gone so far as to light barrels on fire.
A 30-year-old Tunisian man charged with raping a jogger in a public park outside Turin has failed to appear at his latest court hearing and can no longer be located more than two years after the attack, Italian court officials reported.
The defendant, who has not been publicly named, missed a Sept. 17 hearing at a Turin court, where he is accused of sexual violence in the June 29, 2024, assault and rape in Luserna San Giovanni.
Italian media outlet Turino Today indicates that the man may have already left Piedmont and returned to Tunisia but his current whereabouts are unknown.
According to the prosecution’s account presented in court, the 40-year-old woman was running in a municipal park in late afternoon when a man grabbed her from behind. The struggle quickly turned violent. Prosecutors say he sexually assaulted her and fell onto her during the fight, fracturing her legs. She bit his arm through a red T-shirt. He then fled.
A carabinieri officer who responded testified that the woman could not stand.
“I was among the first to intervene,” the officer told the court. “I remember that the woman could not stay on her feet because of the fractures to her legs. I supported her while we waited for the ambulance.”
Police found the suspect after patrol officers noticed a man walking with his partner with a wound resembling a bite mark, leading the officers to suspect that the man may have been the rape suspect. Officers said he appeared nervous. At his home, he broke down in tears, showed the bite marks and handed over the clothing he said he had worn during the attack, including the red shirt the victim had described. Taken to the station, he confessed to the crimes in the case.
In court, the victim’s husband said that the rape and assault dramatically changed life for his wife, him, and their children.
“For at least a year, she could only walk on crutches. She suffered so much,” he said.
The woman’s sister told the court: “I was informed by phone of what had happened. My sister is a rock, but nothing is the same for her anymore. The same goes for us: these are things that mark you, there is no going back.”
The first judge did not impose pretrial detention on the suspect. Reporting on the ruling, the judge cited the man’s cooperation, the fact that he was not arrested in the act, the absence of a prior criminal record, and a finding that there was no concrete flight risk.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe long ago described the business model of the Chinese Communist Party as “Rob, Replicate, Replace.” They steal the technology and know-how for a product, copy it, then flood it back into the marketplace at a far lower price, thereby putting the product’s original manufacturers out of business. In Belgium, flagship Belgian semiconductor company BelGaN was bought by the Chinese regime, robbed of its intellectual property, technology and know-how for the benefit of a “mirror company” in China, and then eliminated in Belgium. Screengrab youtube
Even if Chinese technological theft is less frequent in Europe than in the United States —there is far less technology to steal from Europe than from the US — it is nevertheless all too present.
The practice follows what the current director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, long ago called the business model of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): “Rob, Replicate, Replace.” They steal the technology and know-how for a product, copy it, then flood it back into the marketplace at a far lower price, thereby putting the product’s original manufacturers out of business. When the CCP believes its hold on the market share has been consolidated into something resembling a monopoly, the prices go back up.
Watch out! The same will be true for computer chips.
Currently, the German car industry is being potentially demolished with this practice by Chinese electric vehicles. Only US President Donald J. Trump is saving America’s car industry by banning Chinese vehicles as well as by offering financial incentives to anyone planning to manufacture cars — or just about anything else — in the US.
In Belgium, for instance, BelGaN, a flagship Belgian semiconductor company, was bought by the Chinese regime, robbed of its intellectual property, technology and know-how for the benefit of a “mirror company” in China, and then eliminated in Belgium.
The BelGaN site in Oudenaarde, East Flanders, dates back to 1983, when it operated under the name Mietec and was regarded as one of the flagships of Flanders’ “third industrial revolution.” It subsequently came under AMI Semiconductor and then ON Semiconductor (ONSEMI). In 2021-2022, ONSEMI, Belgium’s last industrial-scale chip manufacturing facility, was sold to BelGaN for approximately $13.6 million.
BelGaN Group BV, incorporated on September 30, 2021, was a joint venture between Rockley Management (HK) Ltd and Wuxi Group Ltd, two companies registered in China. That should have set off alarm bells among the Belgian authorities, notoriously among the most naïve and credulous in Europe.
Belgium, however, did not bring an interfederal foreign-investment screening mechanism into force until July 1, 2023. Meanwhile, the acquisition of the plant had been completed in February 2022. Today, semiconductors are explicitly listed among the strategic technologies subject to screening… a bit late.
Rockley Management (HK) Limited forms part of a technological and financial network long active between the United Kingdom and China. The Hong Kong company is linked to brothers Andrew and Robert Rickman, central figures in the Rockley Group, based in Oxford and also established in Shanghai. The group developed several semiconductor investments in China, notably through a Rockley China Fund and stakes in Chinese technology companies. Andrew Rickman was also appointed an honorary professor at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, which comes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Rockley Management was therefore not an isolated Hong Kong vehicle but part of a technology-investment network already deeply connected to the Chinese ecosystem.
Alan Zhou (also known as Alan Zhen Zhou or Zhou Zhen) an experienced industry executive, was appointed CEO of BelGaN. The stated goal was to transform its plant into a foundry for 6- and 8-inch gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor wafers, create a “GaN Valley” in Belgium and align the company with the European Chips Act.
GaN technology makes it possible to produce electronic components that are smaller, more energy-efficient and capable of operating at higher frequencies than comparable silicon-based devices. Its applications are numerous: electric vehicles, chargers, solar-power systems, data centers, aerospace and space systems, and military applications such as radar and electronic warfare.
Approximately 400 to 440 employees were retained.
Creation of a “Mirror Company” in China
A few months after BelGaN was acquired, a new Chinese company called Fuzhou GaGu Semiconductor Co. (福州镓谷半导体有限公司) — also known as Gankool, GaNkool and Gancool — was created in the Fuzhou development zone, Fujian Province. It produces exactly the same GaN technology, under the same conditions, using the same machines and processes. Fuzhou GaGu Semiconductor is financed by a purely Chinese investment fund, “partnering,” as all businesses are required to do, with the Chinese government.
The timing is important. On February 8, 2022, ONSEMI finalized the sale of its Oudenaarde plant to BelGaN Group BV. On July 20, 2022, Fuzhou GaGu Semiconductor was incorporated in Fuzhou.
This timing demonstrates the existence of an overall plan from the very first Chinese move toward BelGaN. One does not improvise a semiconductor company, its model, methods and technology, in a matter of months. The timing also reveals the Chinese regime’s feeling of impunity when confronted with naïve Belgium, or most likely anyone else who complies.
The Principal Suspect: H.L.
H.L., whom several public sources have identified as probably the GaN specialist Hu Liang (梁琥), is a 52-year-old Belgian-Chinese national residing in Leuven. Around August 2022, H.L. took up a senior research position at BelGaN.
Before joining BelGaN H.L. had previously worked at the Belgian nonprofit research and development organization Imec (“the chip lab of the world“), where he headed its epitaxy activities – the process of placing crystalline layers of foundation on which to build semiconductor devices. Chinese publications simultaneously present him as general manager, CTO and chief scientist of Fuzhou GaGu Semiconductor. The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office and most Belgian media outlets continue to identify him only by the initials H.L.
In March 2023, H.L. was presented as a director of Fuzhou GaGu Semiconductor at a conference in China, alongside Alan Zhou. His LinkedIn profile mentioned only BelGaN.
There was still no reaction from the Belgian authorities, even though all the elements of the “transfer” were plainly in place.
When one speaks of the principal suspect, what must obviously be understood is the linchpin of the totalitarian Chinese Communist regime. The West needs to be reminded, relentlessly, that there is no Chinese government, only the Chinese Communist Party. Likewise, every Chinese company is merely one of the estimated 100 million faces of the CCP, whose members make up roughly 7% of China’s population. The real “suspect” in the entire affair is, and always has been, the CCP, whose economic development model rests on one simple principle: the constant, systematic and unrelenting theft of Western intellectual property. How much of that is on us for letting them?
Financial Difficulties, Bankruptcy and Sale of Assets
In 2023, BelGaN recorded a net loss of €8.3 million on revenue of €55 million. Meanwhile, the company was unable to raise enough financing for its planned conversion from conventional silicon-chip production to GaN manufacturing, which required substantial new capital investment.
The Flemish government examined the company’s Chinese links – a review that likely contributed to the decision not to provide rescue subsidies. Put differently, when the Flemish government realized that a Flemish company had become Chinese, it stopped subsidizing it.
BelGaN was declared bankrupt on July 31, 2024, and more than 400 employees lost their jobs.
As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, BelGaN’s assets were divided into approximately 1,800 auction lots — individual machines or groups of equipment and other factory assets — and sold online by court-appointed liquidators to raise money for creditors. The auction generated approximately €23 million, with Chinese companies acquiring roughly one-third of the assets, including about €8.5 million worth of high-tech equipment. Other buyers came from Germany, the United States and elsewhere. Some of the machinery bound for China required export licenses because of potentially military or defense-related applications.
Investigation, Arrest and Charges
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Judicial Police of East Flanders are now investigating the matter as part of the bankruptcy case. H.L. was arrested on May 10, 2026, at Zaventem Airport as he was preparing to board a flight to Beijing. He remains in pretrial detention at Oudenaarde Prison.
The charges against H.L. are serious: espionage, participation in a criminal organization, misuse of corporate assets, unlawful disclosure of trade secrets and bankruptcy-related offenses. The prosecutor’s office states that there are serious, precise and consistent indications of unlawful transfers abroad of specialized intellectual property and trade secrets relating to the production of GaN chips.
Alan Zhou, BelGaN’s last CEO and a Chinese national, is currently being sought by Belgian authorities. According to Belgian media, Zhou played a decisive role in transferring BelGaN’s intellectual property, technology and know-how to Fuzhou GaGu Semiconductor. This is plausible, to say the least, given that he was the CEO of BelGaN from its inception until its bankruptcy.
H.L.’s lawyer, Dimitri de Beco, denies all the allegations against his client and stresses the presumption of innocence. He argues that, even if the facts were established, they would not amount to espionage but possibly instead to the unlawful disclosure of trade secrets.
Technological and Strategic Stakes
Belgium’s State Security Service, in its “Intelligence Report 2025,” describes a Chinese strategy using “mirror companies” that it calls “copy to China”:
“Chinese firms invest in Belgian companies, research centres or spin-offs – preferably small entities developing promising technologies but facing funding challenges – to gain access to specific technologies. They then establish a ‘copy to China’ company in China to produce the same technology on a larger scale. The original parent company is subsequently sold, ideally at a profit.”
The investigation is ongoing. No conviction has been handed down to date.
Power couple surrounded by grift allegations and prosecutions
It’s reckoning time in Madrid.
Few heads of government anywhere in the world are so surrounded by corruption scandals, investigations, and prosecutions as Spain’s Pedro Sánchez.
By now, his brother, many of his top aides, his predecessor, and even his wife are all allegedly involved in wrongdoing.
Yesterday (21), it arose that the Spanish Prime Minister’s wife, Begoña Gómez, will have to stand trial on charges of influence peddling and embezzlement.
“Investigating Judge Juan Carlos Peinado on Monday ordered Gómez and Cristina Álvarez, her aide at La Moncloa, the prime minister’s office, to face trial after Madrid’s Provincial Court cleared the way in July, Spanish media reported.
The case centers on accusations that Gómez used her relationship to advance her career and co-direct a program at Madrid’s Complutense University, while also using public resources and government staff for private interests. Gómez denies wrongdoing.”
“The proceedings are the latest in a scandal-riddled year for Socialist leader Sánchez. Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero recently faced questions over a €53-million pandemic bailout, while Socialist heavyweight Santos Cerdán was investigated in a public-contract kickback probe involving former minister José Luis Ábalos. Both men deny wrongdoing.”
“Gómez must face trial because Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who oversaw the criminal investigation, found ‘reasonable indications of criminal conduct’, according to a decision filed Monday. These indications are strong enough for a jury to have to decide whether crimes were committed, Peinado said.
The scandal involving Gómez has rocked Spanish politics for more than two years, with the government and Sánchez repeatedly denying any wrongdoing and saying that the investigation is part of a broader political attack against him and his administration. The premier and his Socialist Party have been facing mounting troubles with a series of criminal probes undermining his support among voters.”
“Peinado said Gómez took advantage of her high-profile position to secure a post at a university in Madrid and then having used the post to channel public funds into a software development project.
Gómez is accused of misappropriation of public funds for having a personal assistant, paid by the government, help with tasks related to her private activities. The aide will also stand trial.”
