The secret antenna, Airbus and China (part 1)
intelligence services suspect that a small 
telecommunications company set up a listening station near Airbus sites.
About a hundred metres from the Champs-Élysées in Paris, down a narrow street that cuts across the "most beautiful avenue in the whole world", stands 17 Rue du Colisée. This unassuming business centre is home to a law firm, a company specialising in semiconductors and a music production company. Since Jan 1, the building also has a new occupant: company SATHD Europe, which specialises in satellite telecommunications. Despite being legally registered, the company does not appear on the plaque listing the tenants. People in the building say they have seen no sign of the mysterious Chinese entity within the building.
SATHD Europe does however indeed exist. intelligence services even suspect that the company is behind one of the largest espionage operations targeting France in recent years.
In early 2022, officers from DRSD defence intelligence and security directorate, the defence ministry's counter-intelligence service, spotted a suspicious antenna protruding from the balcony of a building in Boulogne-sur-Gesse, a small rural commune in Haute-Garonne in the south-west of the country. It looks very much like a satellite dish used to receive television signals. However, counter-intelligence agents are on the alert. The village is located about 71km as the crow flies from the Issus Aussaguel teleport. This telecommunications centre, south of Toulouse, controls the Earth observation satellites of the French space agency CNES (Centre national d'études spatiales), including the Pléiades satellites made by Airbus Groupand the SWOT satellites designed by Thales Alenia Space (TAS) and 
JPL.
Boulogne-sur-Gesse is the perfect location for intercepting communications between the Issus Aussaguel teleport and the satellites it controls. The village is located right in the middle of the satellite data reception cone, which covers a distance of ~150km on the ground. Within this perimeter, a specially adapted device can easily intercept communications between a satellite and its operator.
The town is located at a similar distance (74km) from the site of the Astrolabe of Airbus Defence and Space (ADS), the multinational's division specialising in military aircraft, drones, missiles, space launchers and satellites. From this location, Airbus engineers send programming commands to the group's satellites, including the Pléiades Neo, and receive images collected from orbit.
Shortly after reporting the existence of the unusual antenna, counter-intelligence agents from the defence ministry alerted the National Frequency Agency (ANFR), which manages all radio frequencies in France. Is the object in question authorised? The ANFR says that it is not. At the same time, the identity of the person who placed the equipment on their balcony caught the DRSD's attention. She is national Dong H., 56. A graduate of the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), which has close ties to PLA, she worked for nearly 20 years at the China Academy of Space Technology, part of state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.
Dong H. is also the president and sole employee of SATHD Europe, which was created in France in Mar 2020. The company, which states in its legal statutes that its main activity is "providing communication services in the space sector", was at the time based in Toulouse, at the home where Dong H. lived with her husband, a French engineer. It has virtually no turnover and is owned by private company Emposat which operates satellite communication stations. Emposat recently suffered a major setback in Europe, when the Czech Republic decided in Mar 2025, for the first time ever, to block a foreign investment, in this case a ground station built by Emposat (x.com/byron_wan/stat), citing fears of espionage.
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intelligenceonline.com/government-int

intelligence services suspect that a small telecommunications company set up a listening station near Airbus sites.
About a hundred metres from the Champs-Élysées in Paris, down a narrow street that cuts across the "most beautiful avenue in the whole world", stands 17 Rue du Colisée. This unassuming business centre is home to a law firm, a company specialising in semiconductors and a music production company. Since Jan 1, the building also has a new occupant: company SATHD Europe, which specialises in satellite telecommunications. Despite being legally registered, the company does not appear on the plaque listing the tenants. People in the building say they have seen no sign of the mysterious Chinese entity within the building.
SATHD Europe does however indeed exist. intelligence services even suspect that the company is behind one of the largest espionage operations targeting France in recent years.
In early 2022, officers from DRSD defence intelligence and security directorate, the defence ministry's counter-intelligence service, spotted a suspicious antenna protruding from the balcony of a building in Boulogne-sur-Gesse, a small rural commune in Haute-Garonne in the south-west of the country. It looks very much like a satellite dish used to receive television signals. However, counter-intelligence agents are on the alert. The village is located about 71km as the crow flies from the Issus Aussaguel teleport. This telecommunications centre, south of Toulouse, controls the Earth observation satellites of the French space agency CNES (Centre national d'études spatiales), including the Pléiades satellites made by Airbus Groupand the SWOT satellites designed by Thales Alenia Space (TAS) and JPL.
Boulogne-sur-Gesse is the perfect location for intercepting communications between the Issus Aussaguel teleport and the satellites it controls. The village is located right in the middle of the satellite data reception cone, which covers a distance of ~150km on the ground. Within this perimeter, a specially adapted device can easily intercept communications between a satellite and its operator.
The town is located at a similar distance (74km) from the site of the Astrolabe of Airbus Defence and Space (ADS), the multinational's division specialising in military aircraft, drones, missiles, space launchers and satellites. From this location, Airbus engineers send programming commands to the group's satellites, including the Pléiades Neo, and receive images collected from orbit.
Shortly after reporting the existence of the unusual antenna, counter-intelligence agents from the defence ministry alerted the National Frequency Agency (ANFR), which manages all radio frequencies in France. Is the object in question authorised? The ANFR says that it is not. At the same time, the identity of the person who placed the equipment on their balcony caught the DRSD's attention. She is national Dong H., 56. A graduate of the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), which has close ties to PLA, she worked for nearly 20 years at the China Academy of Space Technology, part of state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.
Dong H. is also the president and sole employee of SATHD Europe, which was created in France in Mar 2020. The company, which states in its legal statutes that its main activity is "providing communication services in the space sector", was at the time based in Toulouse, at the home where Dong H. lived with her husband, a French engineer. It has virtually no turnover and is owned by private company Emposat which operates satellite communication stations. Emposat recently suffered a major setback in Europe, when the Czech Republic decided in Mar 2025, for the first time ever, to block a foreign investment, in this case a ground station built by Emposat (x.com/byron_wan/stat), citing fears of espionage.
1/n
intelligenceonline.com/government-int
While the Chinese company has acknowledged that SATHD Europe is affiliated with it (pic below), the company's legal status lists 44-year-old national, Wei Dong, president of Hong Kong-based company Sateherd HK Ltd, as its sole shareholder. Created in Nov 2019, four months before its French subsidiary, this company and its director were mentioned in an article in the Samoa Observer in Nov 2022. The Polynesian archipelago's main daily newspaper reported that the authorities had halted the construction of a satellite ground station being built by a telecommunications company called Sateherd Samoa for national security reasons, citing a risk of espionage. Sateherd Samoa's three directors include Wei, the president of Sateherd HK Ltd.
These discoveries prompted the DRSD to share all its information with other intelligence services. As a sign that the matter was being taken seriously, it was decided in the spring of 2022 to create an inter-agency unit bringing together DGSI domestic intelligence, DGSE foreign intelligence, DNRED customs intelligence, the finance ministry's anti-money laundering unit Tracfin as well as the DRSD. This was an unusual set-up for economic counter-intelligence, where working together on such secret matters was not the norm.
Working in the background, the French spies pooled their information and closely monitored the activities of the Toulouse-based company and its president. They encountered difficulties in establishing and documenting clear evidence of espionage. This requires proving both the illegal collection of information and, even more difficult, its transmission to a foreign power. After several months, the inter-agency unit, which held several meetings in Paris and Toulouse, decided instead to play the obstruction card, focusing on the fact that the antenna had been installed illegally. The case was referred to the courts. A judicial investigation into the improper use of radio frequencies or equipment was opened by the prosecutor in nearby Saint-Gaudens.
These investigations reveal that the equipment in Boulogne-sur-Gesse was indeed capable of intercepting French satellite communications. Better still, investigators found that the secret antenna was specifically targeting French satellites and was tuned to their communication frequencies. However, the question of whether this data was transmitted to a third party remains uncertain.
A classified note from one of the five French intelligence agencies involved estimates that the facts, particularly the modus operandi, are characteristic of an operation carried out by Ministry of State Security (MSS), China's main secret service. Between the late 1990s and the mid-2010s, it was the MSS that led the recruitment of two DGSE agents who were eventually convicted of treason in 2020. French counter-espionage agents also agree that the aim of this operation was to find out how French satellite operators, including CNES, Airbus and Thales Alenia Space, communicated with their satellites.
When contacted, the French ministry of armed forces confirmed that the DRSD had indeed alerted the national frequency agency and that "the competent authorities [had referred the matter] to the public prosecutor." For his part, the public prosecutor in Saint-Gaudens, Christophe Amunzateguy, declined to comment, as did Airbus and the CNES. Likewise for the embassy in France and Emposat. As for Dong H., she replied: "All I can tell you is that everything is false."
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national, Wei Dong, president of Hong Kong-based company Sateherd HK Ltd, as its sole shareholder. Created in Nov 2019, four months before its French subsidiary, this company and its director were mentioned in an article in the Samoa Observer in Nov 2022. The Polynesian archipelago's main daily newspaper reported that the authorities had halted the construction of a satellite ground station being built by a telecommunications company called Sateherd Samoa for national security reasons, citing a risk of espionage. Sateherd Samoa's three directors include Wei, the president of Sateherd HK Ltd.
These discoveries prompted the DRSD to share all its information with other intelligence services. As a sign that the matter was being taken seriously, it was decided in the spring of 2022 to create an inter-agency unit bringing together DGSI domestic intelligence, DGSE foreign intelligence, DNRED customs intelligence, the finance ministry's anti-money laundering unit Tracfin as well as the DRSD. This was an unusual set-up for economic counter-intelligence, where working together on such secret matters was not the norm.
Working in the background, the French spies pooled their information and closely monitored the activities of the Toulouse-based company and its president. They encountered difficulties in establishing and documenting clear evidence of espionage. This requires proving both the illegal collection of information and, even more difficult, its transmission to a foreign power. After several months, the inter-agency unit, which held several meetings in Paris and Toulouse, decided instead to play the obstruction card, focusing on the fact that the antenna had been installed illegally. The case was referred to the courts. A judicial investigation into the improper use of radio frequencies or equipment was opened by the prosecutor in nearby Saint-Gaudens.
These investigations reveal that the equipment in Boulogne-sur-Gesse was indeed capable of intercepting French satellite communications. Better still, investigators found that the secret antenna was specifically targeting French satellites and was tuned to their communication frequencies. However, the question of whether this data was transmitted to a third party remains uncertain.
A classified note from one of the five French intelligence agencies involved estimates that the facts, particularly the modus operandi, are characteristic of an operation carried out by Ministry of State Security (MSS), China's main secret service. Between the late 1990s and the mid-2010s, it was the MSS that led the recruitment of two DGSE agents who were eventually convicted of treason in 2020. French counter-espionage agents also agree that the aim of this operation was to find out how French satellite operators, including CNES, Airbus and Thales Alenia Space, communicated with their satellites.
When contacted, the French ministry of armed forces confirmed that the DRSD had indeed alerted the national frequency agency and that "the competent authorities [had referred the matter] to the public prosecutor." For his part, the public prosecutor in Saint-Gaudens, Christophe Amunzateguy, declined to comment, as did Airbus and the CNES. Likewise for the embassy in France and Emposat. As for Dong H., she replied: "All I can tell you is that everything is false."
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