Security scare over China’s £100m swoop
THE Chinese have quietly taken control of a £5billion, Londonbased company that stores vast amounts of highly sensitive data, sparking fears for Britain’s national security.
Politicians and experts last night called for the security services to investigate the £100million share swoop over the New Year that gave Chinese investors majority control over Global Switch, Europe’s largest data centre operator.
The Australian government has already said it will move files from its Department of Defence out of a Global Switch site in Sydney, due to concerns that Communist officials in Beijing could access military secrets.
Security expert Professor Anthony Glees accused the UK Government of ‘failing to take this threat as seriously as it should’, adding that Ministers were ‘so obsessed’ with attracting foreign investment that they risked ‘throwing national security to the four winds’.
Tory MP Nigel Evans said: ‘If other countries like Australia have deep concerns, then why is it we don’t?’
A group of Chinese investors operating as a consortium called Elegant Jubilee increased its stake to 51 per cent in the company in discreet dealings between Christmas and the New Year. The power-grab went almost unnoticed because most people were on holiday.
Those behind Elegant Jubilee say they are independent investors with no links to the Chinese state.
But Professor Glees said: ‘The Chinese Communist Party has a finger in every single significant pie. Were there to be a conflict between us at some point, the Chinese would be extremely well-placed not just to shut down our energy supplies but to use our own data against us.’
Previously, Global Switch was controlled by the Reuben brothers, property tycoons David and Simon, whose £14billion fortune puts them among the richest men in Britain. They own the other 49 per cent of the company.
They sold a £2.4billion stake to the Chinese investors behind Elegant Jubilee in December 2016, provoking the Australian government’s move.
A Global Switch spokesman described the company as a property firm and said it had ‘no access to any customer data’ stored in its facilities and a security agreement restricted investors’ access to data centres.
A spokesman for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the deal was ‘a commercial matter’.
‘UK is not taking threat as seriously as it should’