China used a Border Force officer to carry out “shadow policing operations” in the UK including spying on dissidents and forcing entry to a suspected fraudster’s flat, a court has heard.
Retired Hong Kong police superintendent Chung Biu (Bill) Yuen, 65, is alleged to have tasked Chi Leung (Peter) Wai, 38 – who worked for UK Border Force from December 2020 and was a special constable in the City of London Police – and others with missions.
The Old Bailey heard they received requests from the Hong Kong authorities to gather intelligence on exiles targeted with £100,000 bounties over their alleged links to pro-democracy protests, including Nathan Law.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said Yuen and Wai both undertook and tasked others to “conduct special hostile activity” including “information gathering, hostile surveillance, and acts of deception” targeting Hong Kong diaspora now based in the UK.
They also put together a team to gain access to the Pontefract flat of Monica Kwong, who left Hong Kong in December 2023 accused of fraud, the court heard.
A jury was told they undertook surveillance “as if it was a legitimate UK police operation”, then tried to trick their way inside, first posing as electricians, then pouring water under the front door to fake a flood.
Mr Atkinson said they discussed setting off the fire alarm before deciding to force entry to the flat before the UK police intervened.
He told the court “the defendants engaged in shadow policing operations on behalf of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and thereby, the People’s Republic of China”.
“By shadow policing operations, I mean the gathering of information about persons of interest to the Hong Kong authorities, undertaking surveillance on such persons and otherwise acting as if they were entitled, in this country, to act as a law enforcement or state intelligence service, when no such entitlement existed,” he said.
Wai and Yuen, who was working for the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office, are both dual Chinese and British nationals.
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Wai, of Staines-upon-Thames in Surrey, and Yuen, of Hackney in east London, are accused of breaching the National Security Act by assisting the Hong Kong intelligence service.
Both deny assisting a foreign intelligence service between 20 December 2023 and 2 May 2024. It is alleged they agreed to undertake information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception.
They also deny a second charge of foreign interference on 1 May 2024 by forcing entry into a UK residential address.
Wai denies an additional charge of misconduct in a public office while working as a UK Border Force officer between 16 September 2022 and 2 May 2024 by conducting searches of Home Office databases available to him in his role without justification for doing so.
The trial, which is expected to last up to nine weeks, continues.
