HKETO duo plead not guilty to spying charges｜#GreenBeanMedia

An official of the Hong Kong government’s Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London and his alleged accomplice on Thursday formally denied charges of spying for a foreign intelligence service, and for breaking into a home in the UK.

The not guilty plea made by HKETO manager Bill Yuen Chung-biu and security firm owner Peter Wai Chi-leung at London’s Central Criminal Court mark the start of a protracted proceeding, with the date of a six-week jury trial set for 10 March 2025. 

At the pre-trial hearing before Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb, Yuen, 64, and the 38-year-old Wai assumed the dock and were asked for the first time to enter a plea since their arrest by the UK police in May. The pair have been released on bail and had made four court appearance since then.

Spotting a navy suit and tie, Yuen appeared calm and relaxed, while Wai sat expressionless two chairs apart from his alleged accomplice wearing a grey blazer and dark tie. Both rose to declare “not guilty” when the clerk read out the respective charges.

Both Yuen and Wai were charged for two counts of offences under the National Security Act 2023. The court heard that under the first charge, Yuen and Wai together with others unnamed persons agreed to undertake information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception between 20 December 2023 and 2 May 2024, that was likely to assist a foreign intelligence service, in contrary to section 3(2) and (9) of the Act.  For the second charge, the pair and other unnamed persons were accused of engaging in forced 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, in contrary to section 13(2) and (7). 

Wai was also charged for the common law offence of misconduct in public office, where he was accused of wilfully misconducted himself between the 16 September 2022 and 2 May 2024 by conducting searches of Home Office databases available to him in his role as a public officer, namely a UK Border Force Officer, without any justification for doing so. The pair will next appear in court for a pre-trial hearing on 14 February 2025.

Justice Cheema-Grubb postponed the original scheduled commencement of the trial by four weeks to 10 March, after taking into account the growing amount of evidence presented by the prosecution lead by Duncan Atkinson, KC, as well as the requests by Yuen and Wai’s legal teams respectively headed by Jonathan Caplan, KC and Aftab Jafferjee, KC, who wanted more time to put together their defence.

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