May
2024
British authorities charged three men with assisting a foreign intelligence service by forcing entry into the residential home of a British National (Overseas) passport holder who left Hong Kong in December 2023. The three men have been charged with participating in “information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception”, as well as conducting “foreign interference.”
The arrestees consisted of an employee of the London HKETO, as well as two directors of UK-registered private security firms. Bill Yuen, Peter Wai, and Matthew Trickett. Yuen is employed at the London branch of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office as an office manager. Wai, with over 20 years’ experience in the British military, police and private security sector, is director of a UK-registered private security firm called D5 Consultancy Limited that counts many veterans of the British military and police among its employees. Trickett, who served as a British Royal Marine from 2007 to 2013, is director of a private surveillance firm called MTR Consultancy.
The prosecution alleged that Yuen had acted on behalf of the London HKETO in hiring Wai’s security firm for surveillance services which included ongoing surveillance against exiled pro-democracy Hong Kong activist Nathan Law since 2021. Unionist Christopher Mung and activist Finn Lau, both from Hong Kong and currently based in the UK, were also targeted. Their names were found on a note on Trickett’s phone. The three targeted activists have had HK$1 million bounties issued against them by Hong Kong national security authorities.
Bank records show that Wai’s security firm D5 Security received three payments from the London HKETO’s HSBC bank account totaling £95,500 between June 2023 and January 2024. The payments then went out to other parties including Trickett’s firm.
Summary
Though it has been well documented that Chinese security authorities engage in transnational repression against the Hong Kong overseas diaspora, the involvement of a British national in this case is particularly notable. This case is also not the first instance of a sophisticated surveillance scheme targeting Hong Kong activists in the UK:an investigation by Peabody award-winning journalist Isobel Yeung revealed attempts by someone posing as a Western journalist to surveil a member of UK’s Hong Kong diaspora.
This case also lends further insight into the HKETO’s function in the HKSAR government’s transnational repression campaigns: though the HKETO’s role in propaganda and counter-lobbying has been well documented, this case provides strong evidence for the idea that the HKETOs also serve as hubs for conducting surveillance on overseas dissidents.
Analysis
