Three charged with aiding Hong Kong intelligence service
A Hong Kong trade official working in London has appeared in court alongside a Border Force officer and an immigration enforcement official accused of monitoring, surveillance and harassment of pro-democracy activists in the UK.
The three men, Chung Biu Yuen, 63, Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, and Matthew Trickett, 37, have been charged with unlawfully assisting the Hong Kong intelligence service and engaging in foreign interference by forcing entry into a British address.
Yuen, from Dalston, east London, works as an office manager at Hong Kong’s Economic and Trade Office, an organisation responsible for trade and investment on behalf of the former British colony that is now an autonomous region of China.
Wai, a Chinese-British national, works in Border Force at Heathrow airport. He is also a City of London special constable, and the founder of a private security firm, D5. Its website describes him as “having over 20 years’ experience in the British military, police and private security sector”.
Trickett, a Home Office immigration enforcement officer, also runs a private security consultancy. His profile on LinkedIn lists him as being a former Royal Marine commando.
The three spoke only to confirm their names, ages and addresses at an initial hearing at Westminster magistrates court yesterday.
All three men were charged with engaging in unlawful information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception between 20 December 2023 and 2 May 2024, contrary to the National Security Act 2023.
They are also accused of forcing entry into a UK residential address on 1 May 2024, being reckless as to whether the prohibited conduct, or course of conduct of which it forms part, would have an interference effect, contrary to the act.
At least 140,000 people from Hong Kong have relocated to the UK since February 2021, when new visa rules allowed people holding British National Overseas passports to live and work in Britain.
That followed the passage of a national security law in Hong Kong, and crackdown in the territory, which the UK said violated guarantees of freedom made by China when it resumed control in 1997.
China’s embassy in the UK said that prosecutors had made an “unwarranted accusation” against the Hong Kong government and that it had responded by making “serious representations” to the British counterparts on the case.
After a short hearing yesterday, the three men were given bail by the district judge, Louisa Cieciora.
They are required to report weekly to a local police station, are subject to a 10pm to 5am curfew and are banned from travelling abroad.
They are next due to appear at the Old Bailey on 24 May.
The three were originally detained as part of a larger operation, during which 11 people were arrested at the beginning of the month.
Eight men and a woman were arrested by officers on 1 May in the Yorkshire area, and one man was arrested in London and another in the Yorkshire area the next day, the Metropolitan police said.
The seven men and one woman who were not charged were released from custody on or before 10 May.
Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the Met’s counter-terrorism command, said: “While these offences are concerning, I want to reassure the public that we do not believe there to be any wider threat to them.
“This investigation remains ongoing, but now that charges have been brought, I urge people not to speculate or comment further in relation to this case.”
The National Security Act came into force on 20 December last year and updated Britain’s espionage legislation, including the Official Secrets Acts dating to 1911.