A UK Border Force officer and a senior official at Hong Kong's trade office in London have been found guilty of running a covert "shadow policing" operation on British soil on behalf of Chinese authorities, making them the first people in British history to be convicted of spying for China. Chi Leung "Peter" Wai, 38, and Chung Biu Yuen, 65 — both British-Chinese dual nationals — were convicted at the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, of assisting a foreign intelligence service under UK national security law. Wai was also found guilty of misconduct in public office for conducting unauthorised searches of Home Office immigration databases.
Wai had worked as a Border Force officer at Heathrow Airport and as a City of London special constable, while Yuen was a senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London, which represents the Hong Kong government in the United Kingdom. Prosecutors told the court that Yuen directed Wai to gather intelligence on pro-democracy activists who had fled to Britain following crackdowns in Hong Kong, with dissidents referred to in messages between the two men as "cockroaches." Among the targets was Nathan Law, a prominent exiled politician who led Hong Kong's student protest movement and on whom Chinese authorities have placed a bounty of around £100,000. Surveillance of Law reportedly began as early as 2021. British politicians, including former Conservative cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith and Labour peer Helena Kennedy, were also monitored.
The spying network came to light when police foiled an apparent attempt to forcibly remove a former Hong Kong resident from her flat in Pontefract, a town in West Yorkshire, northern England, in May 2024. Wai was arrested at the scene alongside several others, including two former Hong Kong police officers who had flown to London. A third co-defendant, Matthew Trickett, a former Royal Marine and Home Office immigration officer, died in a park near his home in Maidenhead, Berkshire, a week after being released on bail. Jurors deliberated for nearly 24 hours before returning majority verdicts; they were discharged without reaching verdicts on separate foreign interference charges, and prosecutors said they would not seek a retrial.
The convictions have prompted a sharp diplomatic response. The UK's Home Office minister Dan Jarvis described the men's activities as "an infringement of our sovereignty" and said the Foreign Office would summon the Chinese ambassador to deliver a formal protest. The Chinese embassy, however, dismissed the case as "a political move of abusing the law and manipulating the judicial process," claiming its purpose was to support what it called anti-China elements seeking to destabilise Hong Kong. Sentencing is expected to be scheduled at a hearing on 15 May.
The case is being closely watched by human rights advocates and security analysts as a rare successful prosecution of what officials describe as transnational repression — the practice of authoritarian governments extending surveillance and intimidation of dissidents beyond their own borders. For the tens of thousands of Hong Kongers who have relocated to the United Kingdom in recent years, the verdict underscores both the reach of Beijing's security apparatus and the willingness of British courts to confront it.