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\n Published on
\n 07\/05\/2026 – 22:30 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
The United Kingdom accused China on Thursday after two UK-Chinese dual nationals were convicted of conducting \u201cshadow policing\u201d on UK soil on behalf of the Chinese government.<\/p>\n
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London also said it would summon China’s ambassador after a jury at London\u2019s Old Bailey court found 38-year-old Peter Wai \u2013 a former UK Border Force official \u2013 and 65-year-old Bill Yuen \u2013 a retired Hong Kong police superintendent \u2013 guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the UK\u2019s national security laws following a weeks-long trial.<\/p>\n
The jury, which deliberated for nearly 24 hours, was discharged after failing to reach verdicts on a further foreign interference charge against each defendant.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said they would not seek a re-trial and the pair were remanded into custody ahead of sentencing on a date which will be set on 15 May.<\/p>\n
Wai, who previously served in the British police and the Royal Navy, was also convicted of misconduct in a public office. He had searched the interior ministry’s computer system for people of interest to Hong Kong authorities.<\/p>\n
The court heard how Wai had gathered intelligence on the orders of Yuen, who was a senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (HKETO), which represents Hong Kong’s government in London.<\/p>\n
The pair reportedly targeted Hong Kong dissidents and pro-democracy protesters who had sought refuge in the UK amid government crackdowns, with “special attention” also paid to politicians, including senior Conservative Iain Duncan Smith.<\/p>\n
They carried out information gathering missions, including surveillance and acts of deception. One operation allegedly involved photographing prominent Hong Kong activist and campaigner Nathan Law, who resides in London.<\/p>\n
Messages on Yuen’s phone showed surveillance of Law began as early as 2021.<\/p>\n
Their operations coincided with bounties posted by Hong Kong of around \u00a3100,000 (\u20ac115,600) for information which would lead authorities to identify several UK-based activists, including Law, jurors heard.<\/p>\n
A protester who testified during the legal proceedings told the jury that Wai had threatened him with arrest for confronting a Hong Kong diplomat in the British capital.<\/p>\n
The defendants’ activities were exposed when police foiled an alleged bid to snatch a former Hong Kong resident from her flat in the northern county of Yorkshire in May 2024.<\/p>\n
Wai, of Staines-upon-Thames \u2013 southwest of London \u2013 known to associates by the alias \u2018Fatboy\u2019, and Yuen, of Hackney in east London, had both denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 07\/05\/2026 – 22:30 GMT+2 The United Kingdom accused China on Thursday after two UK-Chinese dual nationals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[891,2057,59,57,58,6875,10721,50,20145,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-571758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-china","tag-court","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-hong-kong","tag-national-security","tag-news","tag-spy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}