A Border Force official and a retired Hong Kong police officer have been found guilty of conducting “shadow policing” operations for China on British soil.
Dual Chinese-British nationals Peter Wai, 38, and Bill Yuen, 65, were convicted of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the National Security Act following a trial at the Old Bailey.
Wai was also convicted on Thursday of misconduct in a public office by searching the Home Office computer system for people of interest to Hong Kong authorities.
The jury, which deliberated for 23 hours and 38 minutes, was discharged after failing to reach a verdict against the defendants of foreign interference by forcing entry into the Pontefract home of alleged fraud suspect Monica Kwong on May 1 2024.
The prosecution announced the Crown would not seek a retrial and the defendants were remanded into custody to be sentenced on a date to be fixed on May 15.
The court had heard how Wai worked for the Border Force, was a City of London Police special constable having formerly been in the Royal Navy.
He had gathered intelligence on the orders of ex-Hong Kong superintendent Yuen, who was a senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (HKETO) in London, said to be an extension in the UK of the Hong Kong government.
Targets included Hong Kong dissidents and pro-democracy protesters living in the UK – with “special attention” paid to British politicians, including senior Tory MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
Prominent campaigner Nathan Law, who has a one million Hong Kong dollar bounty on his head (£95,680), was pictured leaving the Oxford Union during one surveillance operation.
Another protester told jurors how he had been threatened with arrest by Wai for confronting a Hong Kong diplomat outside the Guildhall in London.
The defendants’ activities were exposed on May 1 2024 when police foiled an alleged bid to snatch a former Hong Kong resident, Ms Kwong, from her flat in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, the court was told.
Personal assistant Ms Kwong had left Hong Kong with her young son in 2023 amid accusations of involvement in a £16 million fraud.
She claimed she had been “set up” by her influential ex-employer, businesswoman Tina Zou, to take the blame for the missing money.
Wai was accused of misusing his access to the Home Office computer system to search for people of interest to Chinese authorities in Hong Kong, including Ms Kwong.
Having located her, the defendants put a team together to access her home using “underhand means, deception and then force to achieve their ends”, jurors were told.
The team carried out surveillance and then tried to “trick” their way into her home, including by posing as electricians who had come to repair a fuse, the court had heard.
Among those present was Matthew Trickett, 37, an immigration enforcement officer and ex-Royal Marine, who was filmed repeatedly knocking on Ms Kwong’s door.
He went on to pour bottled water on the floor to simulate a fake flood as part of a failed ruse to get Ms Kwong out of the flat, the trial had heard.
Having been alerted to what was going on, police were bugging their activities and were waiting inside the flat with Ms Kwong when the team finally broke in.
In total, 11 people were arrested, including two more former Royal Marines, Beijing-based Australian Ms Zou and another retired Hong Kong Police superintendent.
When Wai was detained, officers found his warrant card as a special police constable and a second – fake – card identifying him as a superintendent.
Of those arrested, only Trickett, who worked as a Home Office immigration officer, was charged with Wai and Yuen under the National Security Act.
However, a week later, he was found dead in woodland near Maidenhead, Berkshire.
Wai, of Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey, and Yuen, from Hackney, east London, had denied wrongdoing.
Giving evidence in his defence, Wai, who was known to associates as Fatboy, denied that he had been providing intelligence to Chinese authorities for years.
As a teenager he joined the Royal Navy in an engineering role and was on attachment with the Royal Marines before joining the Royal Navy Police, he said.
He claimed the City of London Police card which falsely inflated his rank was to “impress friends and family” and not to intimidate the likes of Ms Kwong.
He told jurors he was an instructor in the traditional Chinese martial art of lion dancing whose troupe had performed at 10 Downing Street.
He insisted that a chat group on which he was accused of sharing intelligence was to do with a company run by his lion dancing master, who was interested in portraying the life of Hongkongers in the UK in a realistic way.
In his defence, Yuen told jurors how he became officer manager at HKETO after retiring from the Hong Kong police after 18 years.
It was part of his job to provide building security – but not to pass intelligence to Chinese authorities in Hong Kong, he said.
He claimed he employed Wai’s private security firm to provide protection for HKETO and visiting dignitaries who were targeted by protesters.
At the time, he said that he believed Wai really was a high ranking Metropolitan Police officer.
He denied the accusation that he seamlessly carried on working as an investigator, gathering information for the Hong Kong Administrative Region, after moving to the UK to join his wife and children.
