UK Border Force officer was 'working for China', court told

UK Border Force officer was 'working for China', court told 2 hours ago Share Save Daniel Sandford UK correspondent Share Save A UK Border Force officer surveilled and investigated Chinese citizens in Britain as part of a "shadow policing operation" with its "tentacles" reaching from Hong Kong, a court has heard. The prosecution said Chi Leung "Peter" Wai, also known as "fatboy", was being given tasks by Chung Biu "Bill" Yuen, a retired Hong Kong police officer who was working at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London. Both men are on trial at the Old Bailey on charges under the National Security Act. The court heard the men arranged for their targets, many of whom were dissidents, to be filmed as part of the surveillance - with the jury shown one woman in Pontefract answering her door in pink pyjamas. Duncan Atkinson KC said the alleged operation "involved persons connected with the Hong Kong authorities acting as if Pontefract were a town in China rather than Yorkshire". Wai, 38, and Yuen, 65, are alleged to have carried out surveillance on Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners, some of them claiming asylum in the UK. A second UK border officer who allegedly got involved in the surveillance, Matthew Trickett, was found dead in May 2024 after being released on bail. Men on trial accused of 'shadow policing' for China on British soil Through his job at the UK Border Force, Wai - who was also a volunteer special constable with the City of London Police and used to work for the Metropolitan Police - had access to the Home Office immigration database called Atlas. The jury heard that Wai would sometimes search the database for information about Chinese dissidents on his rest days, when he shouldn't have been doing any searches at all. Wai, who ran a private security company called D5 Security, is said to have passed on some jobs to fellow UK Border Force colleague called Trickett, who also had his own a private security company. When Yuen, Wai and Trickett wer...