A Border Force official and a retired Hong Kong police officer have been convicted of conducting 'shadow policing' operations for China on British soil. Peter Wai, 38, and Bill Yuen, 65, both dual Chinese-British nationals, were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the National Security Act following a trial at the Old Bailey.
Wai was also convicted of misconduct in a public office for searching the Home Office computer system for individuals of interest to Hong Kong authorities. The jury failed to reach a verdict on a charge of foreign interference related to an alleged forced entry into the home of Monica Kwong in Pontefret, West Yorkshire, on 1 May 2024. The Crown said it would not seek a retrial, and the defendants were remanded into custody to be sentenced on a date to be fixed on 15 May.
The court heard that Wai, a Border Force employee and City of London Police special constable, gathered intelligence on the orders of Yuen, a former Hong Kong superintendent and senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office in London. Targets included Hong Kong dissidents and pro-democracy protesters 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, was pictured leaving the Oxford Union during one surveillance operation. Another protester told jurors he had been threatened with arrest by Wai for confronting a Hong Kong diplomat outside the Guildhall in London.
The defendants' activities were exposed when police foiled an alleged bid to snatch Ms Kwong, a former Hong Kong resident who had left the territory amid accusations of involvement in a £16 million fraud. Wai misused his access to the Home Office computer system to locate her, and the defendants assembled a team to access her home using 'underhand means, deception and then force'. The team posed as electricians and simulated a flood to try to get her out of the flat. Police were waiting inside when the team broke in.
Eleven people were arrested in total, including immigration enforcement officer Matthew Trickett, who was later found dead in woodland near Maidenhead, Berkshire. Wai, of Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey, and Yuen, from Hackney, east London, had denied wrongdoing.
