A UK Border Force officer and a Hong Kong trade official have been sentenced to 10 and eight years in prison respectively for spying for China, in the first convictions under the National Security Act. Peter Wai, 41, and Bill Yuen, 66, were found guilty at the Old Bailey after a two-month trial of assisting a foreign intelligence service.
Wai, a Border Force officer at Heathrow Airport who previously served in the Metropolitan Police and as a special constable, was also convicted of misconduct in a public office for using a Home Office computer system to gather details about his targets. The court heard that Yuen, a senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, took over handling Wai in 2021 to conduct surveillance on Chinese dissidents in the UK.
Sentencing the pair, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb described their actions as 'deliberate, concerted and serious', causing 'real and significant' harm to those targeted. She noted that the National Security Act was enacted in response to persistent foreign state interference, and that such conduct threatens both individual victims and national sovereignty.
The targets of the 'shadow policing' operation included exiled politician Nathan Law and a young activist whose family was persecuted in mainland China. Wai also infiltrated Hong Kong pro-democracy groups and was instructed to gather information on politicians including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and peer Helena Kennedy.
The investigation began after a failed break-in in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in May 2024, which led to the arrest of Yuen, Wai, and a third British national, Matthew Trickett, who was later found dead. Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said the convictions show that such activity 'will not be tolerated' and serve as a warning to others.
