When Huawei undercut rival Ericsson’s bid to build Denmark’s 5G phone network, investigators uncovered a web of influence – and became targets themselves.
At a hastily scheduled meeting on March 5, 2019, the bidding to upgrade Denmark’s cellular network crossed over into something strange. Negotiations for telecommunications infrastructure are high-stakes affairs; the deals, worked out in private, determine which companies are entrusted to embed their equipment and staff at the deepest levels of a country’s phone and internet systems.
But the talks over the Danish contract, which had stretched through the winter, had been particularly fraught.
