A retired Hong Kong police superintendent on Tuesday denied spying for Beijing, telling a London court he played no part in directing shadow policing operations for China on UK soil.
Yuen Chung Biu (袁松彪, also known as Bill Yuen), 65, a dual Chinese-British national, is on trial at the Old Bailey under the National Security Act alongside British Border Force official Wai Chi Leung (衛志良, also known as Peter Wai), 38.
Wai and Yuen are jointly charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service between December 2023 and May 2024, and with a second charge of foreign interference on May 1, 2024.
Photo: Reuters
Wai is also accused of misconduct in a public office by misusing his access to a British Home Office computer system.
Prosecutors said the men gathered intelligence and carried out surveillance on Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and dissidents living in the UK. Both deny all charges.
During cross-examination, British prosecutor Duncan Atkinson suggested that Yuen had never really left the employ of the Hong Kong government.
Yuen had instead moved seamlessly from a 20-year career in the Hong Kong police to a job at the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office in London only months after retiring, Atkinson said.
Yuen retorted that “if I really did something illegal for my authorities you would not pick up such suspicious things,” referring to evidence, such as WhatsApp messages between him and Wai, cited during the trial.
“I’m not dumb as that,” he said.
“If they really wanted to do so they would hire a Hong Kong intelligence officer to do it,” he added, during one of several heated exchanges. “They wouldn’t ask a 66-year-old man to do this and end up in this embarrassing situation.”
Yuen said his return to work had come at his wife’s prompting and after seeing a job advertisement for the role and not at the behest of the Hong Kong authorities.
The prosecutor pressed him on messages he sent asking Wai to “pay special attention” to British lawmakers and local councilors supportive of pro-democracy protesters and to “take some photos and do some research.”
Yuen said the purpose was to avoid “embarrassment” to his employer, not to gather intelligence.
He also denied asking Wai to carry out surveillance on high-profile Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Nathan Law (羅冠聰), despite Wai sending him photographs of Law’s car and license plate.
The pair were arrested after a team of operatives allegedly forced their way into the flat of Monica Kwong (鄺文琪), a Hong Kong fraud suspect, in Pontefract, England, on May 1 2024.
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