Rozina Sabur and Charles Hymas
China exploited the Home Office’s remote working policy to spy on the UK in the first case of its kind.
A Border Force official accessed a Home Office database on his days off to trawl through sensitive details for his Chinese handlers as part of a “shadow policing” operation on British soil, a court heard.
The security breach was revealed during an espionage trial at the Old Bailey, with the guilty verdicts marking the first conviction for Chinese espionage in Britain.
The convictions follow the collapse of the Westminster spy case, in which charges were dropped against a parliamentary researcher and an academic last October.
Peter Wai, 40, used his access to the Home Office’s Atlas computer system – a vast record containing sensitive information such as passport details and addresses of foreign nationals – to track Hong Kong dissidents.
The Chinese spy operation raises the prospect that the data of millions of passengers and the whereabouts of foreign nationals seeking refuge in Britain were compromised.
On Thursday, British government sources said changes had been made to strengthen the system and reduce the risk of a similar security breach.
Covert database access
Wai began working as a Border Force officer at Heathrow in December 2020 and informed the Hong Kong authorities of his access to the Atlas database.
The Old Bailey heard that he would remotely search the database after calling in sick or on his days off to track pro-democracy protesters, to whom he referred as “cockroaches”, on behalf of his handlers.
There appear to have been no checks on his access to the database, raising the prospect that the details of many more dissidents were compromised.
Wai, who also volunteered as a special constable for the City of London Police, was found guilty of misconduct in public office for unlawfully accessing the database.
He was also found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service alongside his handler, Bill Yuen, 65, who was stationed at the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (HKETO) in central London.
Another Border Force officer, Matthew Trickett, who was an ex-Royal Marine, was also drawn into the conspiracy but was found dead in a suspected suicide soon after the spies were caught by counter-terrorism police.
The court heard that the spy ring paid “special attention” to British politicians, including former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, both of whom are leading critics of the Chinese Communist Party and have been sanctioned by Beijing.
The Home Office has previously been criticised for permitting remote-access work, including allowing immigration officers and caseworkers access to the Atlas system to process asylum cases while working from home.
The system was digitised, replacing paper files, during the COVID-19 pandemic when staff could no longer come into the office.
The Home Office operates a flexible working policy under which staff can work the equivalent of two days a week from home, a practice championed by Sir Matthew Rycroft, the chief civil servant in the Home Office.
The trial revealed details of a years-long campaign by Hong Kong authorities to track British citizens deemed subversive or a threat.
It has also exposed how the Chinese state used the HKETO, of which Yuen was third-in-command, as its London outpost to extend its reach.
Jurors were told how Wai, on the orders of Yuen, surveilled and pursued targets as part of Xi Jinping’s Operation Fox Hunt – a global, extrajudicial campaign offering cash bounties to forcibly repatriate anyone wanted by the Chinese state, either for subversion or fraud.
Prosecutors described how, from within its premises on Bedford Square, HKETO office manager Yuen would assist efforts to track down and forcibly return Hong Kong nationals living in Britain.
Yuen, a former Hong Kong police superintendent, had claimed his role at HKETO was merely “administrative”, but prosecutors said it was, in fact, an “intelligence” role.
It was in this guise that he assigned surveillance tasks to Wai, who also ran a private security company that he used as a “vehicle” for the work, including targeting MPs and pro-democracy activists, to benefit “the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and therefore China”.
‘We will continue to hold China to account and challenge them directly for actions which put the safety of people in our country at risk … activity like this was, and will always be, unacceptable on UK soil.’
Dan Jarvis, UK security minister
Far from keeping their agenda secret, Duncan Atkinson, KC, prosecuting, told the court that the Hong Kong authorities had “publicised” bounties for their targets, some of whom were British residents. Up to £100,000 ($188,000) was offered for information to locate or capture them.
Jurors could not agree on a further charge against Wai and Yuen of foreign interference by forcing entry into the home of one of their targets in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. The prosecution said it would not seek a retrial.
Chinese ambassador summoned
Zheng Zeguang, the Chinese ambassador, will be summoned by the Foreign Office following the conviction.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis said the activities by the pair, who hold both British and Hong Kong passports, were “an infringement of our sovereignty and will never be tolerated”.
He added: “We will continue to hold China to account and challenge them directly for actions which put the safety of people in our country at risk. That is why the Foreign Office will summon the Chinese ambassador to make it clear activity like this was, and will always be, unacceptable on UK soil.”
British officials have become increasingly alarmed by the bounties issued by Hong Kong for targets residing in the UK.
Last year, Sir Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, used his annual speech to call out the “harassment and intimidation” and revealed that Hong Kong police had issued more than a dozen bounties for pro-democracy activists in Britain.
Nathan Law, a well-known UK-based pro-democracy protester, was among those surveilled as part of the operation, the court heard. Wai, who used ChatGPT to create his surveillance plans, gathered footage and images of Law outside the Oxford Union in November 2023.
The co-defendants also pursued Monica Kwong, who left Hong Kong in 2023 after being accused of a £16 million fraud by her employer, Tina Zou. Kwong, the daughter of a former CCP official, has denied the accusation and claims she was “set up”.
Amateurish effort
Atkinson detailed how the defendants tracked Kwong down to her home in Pontefract, taking “the law into their own hands”, and acting “as if Pontefract were a district of Hong Kong”.
Far from being a sophisticated operation, the image portrayed to jurors was of an amateurish effort to target Kwong.
They heard how Wai recruited Trickett and others to access Kwong’s home. They posed as building maintenance staff who had come to repair a fuse and later poured water under the front door to pretend there was a leak.
Ultimately, they entered Kwong’s flat by force, filming their efforts on phones and body cameras. The prosecution later used the footage as pivotal evidence.
Little did they know that, while they had been surveilling Kwong’s home, they were under observation themselves by MI5, which had evacuated Kwong and bugged her flat to record their efforts.
Wai was arrested in Kwong’s home on May 1, 2024. He was found with his warrant card as a special constable for the City of London and had a fake card identifying him as a superintendent with the force.
Trickett, 37, who worked with Wai as a Border Force officer, was charged alongside Yuen and Wai in May 2024. He died by suspected suicide a week later.
In total, 11 people were arrested, including two more former Royal Marines, Beijing-based Australian Zou and another retired Hong Kong police superintendent.
Following the convictions, Bethan David, the head of the counter-terrorism division at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “The CPS will not hesitate to prosecute cases where evidence shows illegal attempts to interfere, intimidate or operate covertly in the United Kingdom.”
Insiders said that Wai’s access to the Atlas system from home should have been flagged, as its use was restricted to days when staff were officially working, not when sick or on days off.
Staff also face disciplinary action if they access files unrelated to their work or role.
“It should have been red-flagged if he was accessing it on days off or if he was looking at files he should not be looking at,” a Whitehall source said.
Government sources said that Border Force and Immigration Enforcement were allowed remote access to the database because of the 24/7 nature of the services and the need to work from a range of locations. However, they stressed that no staff were permitted to use Home Office equipment outside their official duties.
Following his arrest, Wai was suspended and immediately dismissed from his Home Office employment.
Wai, of Staines, Surrey, and Yuen, of Hackney, east London, have been remanded into custody and will be sentenced at a later date.
The Telegraph, London
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
