A UK immigration officer has been found guilty of working for Chinese intelligence as part of a “shadow policing operation”.
Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, used his access to the main immigration database to track Hong Kong dissidents based in the UK.
He was found guilty under the National Security Act of assisting a foreign intelligence service alongside Chung Biu “Bill” Yuen, 65, who was initially his contact with the Hong Kong authorities.
Wai was also found guilty of misconduct in public office.
The jury could not agree on a charge against both men of foreign interference by forcing entry into the home of an alleged fraud suspect originally from Hong Kong in West Yorkshire.
The prosecution said it would not be seeking a retrial.
Wai started working as a Border Force officer at Heathrow Airport in December 2020, which gave him access to a vast database of information about foreign nationals in the UK.
He searched it on his days off and sick days, earning money on the side by tracking Hong Kongers who had fled pro-democracy crackdowns for his Chinese contacts. There seems to have been no checks on his access to the database to prevent him doing this.
But he had been providing information on dissidents before then, referring to them in messages as “cockroaches”.
Yuen became his contact with Chinese authorities. A former Hong Kong police officer, he worked as the office manager of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London.
The pair were introduced in 2017 and by the middle of 2021, Wai was reporting directly to Yuen about the activities of Hong Kong dissidents and pro-democracy protesters in the UK.
Wai also drew a fellow Border Force officer, an ex-Royal Marine called Matthew Trickett, into his surveillance of Hong Kong dissidents, the court heard.
Trickett was found dead in a suspected suicide soon after they were caught by counter-terrorism police.
Wai, who holds both British and Hong Kong passports, had many jobs – including as a Metropolitan Police officer from 2015 to 2019.
He was in the Royal Navy for eight years, and worked for a company providing security for events in Chinatown. Wai had also set up his own company, D5 Security.
After leaving the Met, he became a volunteer constable for City of London Police.
Yuen had moved to London within days of retiring from the Hong Kong Police Force in 2015 to join his wife and two children, taking advantage of his dual British-Hong Kong citizenship.
Soon afterwards, he started working at HKETO. The office was set up to promote trade between Hong Kong and the UK, but became increasingly politicised after the 2019 protests in Hong Kong.
He and Wai were introduced at a restaurant in London’s Chinatown by Chu Ting Tang, a prominent figure in the area is known to be sympathetic to the Chinese government’s policies in Hong Kong.
When Wai started working at Heathrow, he sent a message to the former chief superintendent of Hong Kong Police’s Criminal Intelligence Bureau Eddie Ma, who still had links to the Chinese state.
“Will not let any cockroaches in,” Wai wrote.
When he later sent Ma some information about recently-arrived Hong Kong dissidents, Ma wrote back: “The head office seems to be interested at these informations.”
Wai later began working with his fellow Border Force officer Trickett – who was also doing private security work to supplement his Home Office income – to gather information on Hong Kong dissidents.
In 2023, Hong Kong’s chief executive John Lee Ka-chiu, its most senior politician, put bounties of HK$1m (around £100,000) on the heads of some of the pro-democracy campaigners, saying they would be pursued “for life”.
The Chinese government also announced “Operation Fox Hunt” and “Operation Sky Net” to track down fugitives from the law.
In November 2023, Trickett was tasked by Wai to arrange for high-profile Hong Kong activist Nathan Law to be followed to the Oxford Union. He was one of the men with a HK$1m bounty on his head.
Another man who was targeted for surveillance by Wai’s group was Finn Lau, he also had a HK$1m bounty for his arrest.
He was a high-profile democracy protester in 2019 and 2020, who escaped after being arrested in Hong Kong. He was also mysteriously beaten up in London five years ago.
“To be frank, I don’t feel safe in the UK regarding the spying risk,” Lau told the BBC.
“That’s why we have been taking different sorts of measures to try to protect ourselves – like being cautious all the time, looking around, trying to even adopt some maybe anti-following tactics.”
In April 2023, Wai – still a Border Force officer – provided security during the visit to London of Hong Kong’s financial secretary Christopher Hui.
Using his City of London police identity card, Wai threatened to arrest a protester who was campaigning against Hui’s visit, even though he had no official policing role that day.
By 2024, the security service MI5 had become aware of the activities of Wai and his group.
The men had started an operation to find a woman called Monica Kwong, who had been accused of stealing money from her employer in Hong Kong – something she strongly denies.
Using his access to the Atlas database, Wai tracked her down to her flat in Pontefract where she was living with her young son.
He confirmed her presence using the fake delivery of a parcel.
Wai began monitoring Kwong’s flat and, on 30 April 2024, Tina Zou — the woman who alleged that Kwong owed her money — arrived at Heathrow Airport accompanied by several associates and former Hong Kong police officers.
In an operation allegedly coordinated by Wai and Trickett, with Yuen said to be aware of the plan, Zou and some of her staff travelled to Pontefract in what appeared to be an attempt to confront Kwong.
After repeated knocks at the flat went unanswered, the group reportedly became increasingly determined to track her down. They used a “snake camera” to look underneath the door, while Trickett left a note identifying himself as “Dave from maintenance”. Water was also poured under the door in an apparent attempt to convince anyone inside that there was a leak.
On May 1, 2024, the group reportedly forced entry into a flat they had been targeting, only to find the property empty. The entire incident was secretly recorded by an audio surveillance device reportedly planted by MI5.
According to reports, when police officers later moved in, Wai threw a fake warrant card out of a window. The card allegedly identified him as a superintendent with the City of London Police.
During the trial, jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on whether the activities in Pontefract constituted “foreign interference.”
Following the arrest and court appearance of Yuen, Wai and Trickett, Trickett was later found dead at Grenfell Park in Maidenhead in what authorities suspect to be a suicide.
An inquest into his death is expected to take place in November.