“You know I’m quite a boring guy – that’s my character,” a retired police officer accused of running a spy ring for the Chinese government has claimed.
Billy Yuen, 64, denied working as a Chinese agent and told investigators that he only returned to work because his wife was fed up of him hanging around the house.
He said, “Hand on your heart, I have nothing to hide.”
Yuen, from Dalston, east London, is accused of running a spying ring from the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Bedford Square, central London.
The Old Bailey heard that he allegedly “tasked” Peter Weah, 39, of Staines, Surrey, who worked as a UK Border Force officer, with monitoring dissidents in the UK and paying off a £16million debt owed to a Chinese businesswoman.
However, Yuen told police that he loved the UK and had worked for the former Royal Hong Kong Police force for 37 years.
Yuen told police after his arrest, “I’ve actually developed a very close relationship with the UK. If you ask me which place I like more, I like the UK. I’m not going to lie to you.”
“If you ask me I like Hong Kong but if you ask me to balance I like it here the most.”
He sent his daughter in 2009 and his son in 2012 to study in Britain, along with his wife.
When he retired in 2015, Yuen joined him, he said. He explained that his pension was about £4,600 a month and he still owned a property in Hong Kong, so he did not need to work.
“But only my wife, well she was not used to seeing me doing anything at home and so she forced me to go out and do a job.”
Yuen told her, “Nobody will hire me” but she saw an advertisement for an office manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in a free newspaper in Chinatown.
Yuen told officials that his job as “administrative division chief” was to run the office, recruit staff and run finances in the 266-year-old building on Bedford Square.
In Hong Kong, he became Superintendent of Police, worked at Marine Headquarters and then developed technology for the traffic unit.
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She was met by Peter Weah after leaving a restaurant in Chinatown where he was eating lunch or dinner with a friend, who said: “Wait there, that’s your own business.”
Wai, who worked as a special constable for the City of London Police, claimed he was a superintendent and Yuen thought “Wow, Superintendent of Police, well you are young, youthful and promising”.
Wai told him he also ran a “security consulting business” and that Yuen hired him to provide close security for HKETO and they became friends, he said.
Yuen and Y denied assisting the Chinese intelligence service by agreeing to conduct information gathering, surveillance, and deception operations under the National Security Act of 2023.
Wi also denies misconduct in public office by searching the Home Office database without justification.
The lawsuit is ongoing.
