A personal assistant who was targeted by alleged Chinese spies in the UK has denied defrauding her former Hong Kong employer out of millions.
A court heard how Monica Kwong allegedly siphoned off £16.3m from a business owned by Tina Zou, a prominent Beijing-based Australian businesswoman.
Ms Zou, who ran a family company called TWT Global in Beijing and a property development company called Yearshine Investments in Hong Kong, told a contact she would “search all corners of the world to find her”.
British police had bugged Ms Kwong’s flat in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, and swept in to arrest 11 people, including the alleged spies, after operatives forced their way into her property.
Operatives had previously unsuccessfully tried to get Ms Kwong to open the door by pouring water under it while pretending to be from “maintenance”.
Ms Zou, who had flown in from China, was found on the stairs leading up to her former employee’s flat and also arrested.
£16.3m and 118 transfers
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The court heard that Ms Kwong had started working for Ms Zou in 2018, before being made a director of her Hong Kong-based property development company in August 2019.
She was said to have siphoned off £16.3m (144m Hong Kong dollars) in 118 transfers through five personal bank accounts between July 2022 and December 2023 while acting as Ms Zou’s personal assistant.
Ms Kwong told the court that she was asked to put the money through her personal accounts, but did not know why.
“I was a personal assistant, I was not allowed to ask a lot of questions about what I was doing. I just needed to know I was following instructions and not to ask the reason,” Ms Kwong said.
However, she was accused of forging Ms Zou’s signature on a series of cheques to transfer the money, something she denies.
She was also accused of stealing 1,500 bottles of expensive wine and 58 cases of a Chinese spirit called Moutai from the flat, owned by Ms Zou, where she lived in Hong Kong.
She was asked in court about why she had left Hong Kong so suddenly with her young son on 4 December 2023.
She said she discovered from a colleague in China that her boss was “consolidating her assets”, and “I was worried what happened would be on me, that’s why I wanted to leave”.
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The alleged spy ring
Chung Biu “Billy” Yuen, 65, of Hackney, east London, is accused of running a spy ring targeting Hong Kong dissidents in Britain.
Mr Yuen worked as the office manager for the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in central London and allegedly “tasked” Chi Leung “Peter” Wai.
Mr Wai, a 38-year-old dual Chinese-British national from Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey, worked as a UK Border Force officer and a City of London Police special constable.
Wai was helped by Matthew Trickett, who was later released on bail but died before the case came to trial.
Trickett had served with the Royal Marines before joining the UK Border Force at Heathrow Airport and then Home Office Immigration Enforcement.
The defendants were arrested after the team of operatives forced their way into Ms Kwong’s home.
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Yuen and Wai are on trial at the Old Bailey on charges under the National Security Act.
Wai and Yuen are jointly charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service between 20 December 2023 and 2 May 2024, and a second charge of foreign interference on 1 May 2024 by forcing entry into a UK residential address.
Wai is also accused of misconduct in a public office by misusing his access to the Home Office computer system.
Wai and Yuen have denied the charges against them.
A series of messages shown to the jury showed Ms Kwong’s former boss, Ms Zou, trying to work out how to get her money back.
Contacts of Ms Zou offered to get triad gangs (organised crime syndicates historically from Hong Kong, Taiwan or Macau) or former operatives from Mossad (the Israeli security service) involved.
The trial continues.
