Pair ‘took law into their own hands’ in spying for Hong Kong, court told

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Two men including a former Border Force official “took the law into their own hands” as they engaged in shadow policing operations in the UK on behalf of authorities in Hong Kong, a jury was told on Wednesday.

Chung Biu Yuen, 64, office manager of the Hong Kong economic and trade office in London and a retired police officer in the territory, and Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, a former UK Border Force employee and special constable with the City of London police, appeared at the Old Bailey to face charges under the National Security Act 2023.

The two men, who hold dual British and Chinese nationality, are accused of agreeing to undertake information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service between December 2023 and May 2024. 

Both men have denied the charges, which were brought in 2024 under new legislation that widened the scope of what counts as spying. 

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said the defendants received requests from people connected to the Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong authorities to gather intelligence about overseas Hongkongers for whom the territory’s government had issued bounties.

Messages between the defendants show one of the surveillance targets was prominent pro-democracy activist Nathan Law, the court heard.

Atkinson said one of the charges related to both men allegedly forcing entry on May 1, 2024, to the address of Monica Kwong in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, who was accused of fraud by her Hong Kong-based employer Tina Zou.

The defendants undertook surveillance on Kwong’s address “as if they were a legitimate UK police operation” and then “used underhand means” to gain access, the prosecutor said. 

The Old Bailey case concerned the defendants and their associates “taking the law into their own hands and acting as if the UK law was of no relevance”, Atkinson added.

A third man, Matthew Trickett, was originally charged alongside Yuen and Wai. But the former Royal Marine, who had also worked for the UK Border Force, was found dead in a park in Maidenhead, west of London, on May 19, 2024. That was six days after the three defendants were granted bail at Westminster magistrates’ court.

Atkinson said Wai and Trickett were paid for their activity directly by the Hong Kong economic and trade office. Hong Kong was formerly a British colony but is now a special administrative region of China.

Wai is separately charged with misconduct in public office, namely by using his access to a UK Home Office database of people’s immigration status and personal information to conduct multiple searches “against individuals for personal gain”. 

“He carried out searches on a number of names that were of interest to those he was working with in Hong Kong, including both current and retired Hong Kong police officers, and Yuen,” Atkinson told jurors.

“This also included misuse of those systems as part of their shadow police operation to locate Monica Kwong,” Atkinson added.

He told the court that the gathering of such intelligence appeared to have coincided with measures by Hong Kong police to extend their reach beyond the jurisdiction of the territory.

Atkinson told the court that Yuen had directly tasked Wai with monitoring the Hong Kong protest movement in the UK.

This included providing detailed reporting of people, groups and activities in the form of copies of documents, pictures of people, pictures of vehicles, screenshots of mobile phone communications and photographs of search results for people on a Home Office database that records a person’s immigration status as well as names and contact details.

The trial at the Old Bailey is expected to last up to nine weeks.