The Hong Kong government has denied any link to the high-profile UK court case after its trade officer was convicted of spying on overseas activists.

“From the outset, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government has been clearly stating that the allegations in this case are absolutely not related to the HKSAR Government and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London (London ETO), nor are we party to the case,” a government statement sent to the media on Friday morning read.

“We firmly oppose any unfounded allegations against the HKSAR Government and the London ETO.”

The statement was issued shortly after Bill Yuen, an office manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, and former UK Border Force official Peter Wai were found guilty under Britain’s national security laws of assisting a foreign intelligence service.

Yuen and Wai – both British-Chinese dual nationals – were accused of spying on Hong Kong pro-democracy activists living in Britain.

Among those the pair were said to have surveilled was Nathan Law, who is wanted by national security police in Hong Kong with a bounty of HK$1,000,000.

Yuen and Wai were charged in May 2024 alongside a third person, UK immigration officer Matthew Trickett. A week after Trickett was charged, he was found dead in a suspected suicide.

In full: Explainer: Why UK authorities arrested 3 men linked to Hong Kong’s trade office

According to a statement by UK counter-terrorism police, published after the guilty verdict on Thursday, Yuen had been receiving tasks from Hong Kong authorities and delegating them to Wai and Trickett.

Up to 14 years jail

Yuen and Wai were found guilty by a 10-2 jury verdict on Thursday. Wai was also found guilty of misconduct in public office in relation to abusing Home Office systems while working as a border control officer.

Yuen and Wai will be sentenced on a date yet to be determined. They face up to 14 years in jail.

According to the Friday statement, Hong Kong has 15 overseas ETOs in different cities, including the UK capital.

The London office maintains “close liaison with interlocutors in government, business, think tanks and various sectors to enhance the bilateral ties between Hong Kong and the UK in areas including trade, investment, and arts and culture,” it said.

After the guilty verdict, the UK said that it would summon the Chinese ambassador.

“We will continue to hold China to ​account and challenge them directly for actions which put the safety of people ​in our country at risk,” UK Security Minister Dan Jarvis said on Thursday. “That is why the Foreign Office will ⁠summon the Chinese Ambassador to make it clear activity like this was, and will ​always be, unacceptable on UK soil.”

In a statement issued the same day, the Chinese embassy in London condemned the verdict, saying that the UK had manipulated the judicial process as part of its “political move.”

“Its sole purpose is to embolden those anti-China elements who are hiding in the UK and bent on destabilising Hong Kong, and to smear the Chinese government and the Hong Kong SAR government,” it said.

A retired Hong Kong policeman and a former UK Border Force official were convicted by a London jury Thursday of conducting “shadow policing” on British soil on behalf of China.

Ex-police superintendent Bill Yuen, 65, and Peter Wai, 38 — both dual Chinese-British nationals — were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under Britain’s national security laws following a weeks-long trial.

Wai, who worked for the UK’s Border Force immigration and customs enforcement agency after previously serving 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.

The jury at London’s Old Bailey court, which deliberated for nearly 24 hours, was discharged after failing to reach verdicts on a further foreign interference charge against each defendant.

Prosecutors promptly announced they would not seek a retrial and the duo were remanded into custody ahead of sentencing on a date to be set on May 15.

The court had 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.

Politicians, campaigners

The pair targeted Hong Kong dissidents and pro-democracy protesters living in Britain, with “special attention” also paid to politicians, including senior Conservative Iain Duncan Smith.

They undertook information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception, with one operation capturing photographs of prominent campaigner Nathan Law.

Their activities coincided with Hong Kong authorities publishing bounties of around £100,000 (US$136,000) for information helping to identify several UK-based activists, including Law, jurors heard.

Another protester told the jury of how Wai had threatened him with arrest for confronting a Hong Kong diplomat in London.

Messages on Yuen’s phone showed surveillance of Law began as early as 2021, the prosecution said as it gave evidence.

See also: ‘Your inner self is red’: UK border officer accused of ‘infiltrating’ Hong Kong pro-democracy group

The defendants’ activities were exposed in May 2024 when police foiled an alleged bid to snatch a former Hong Kong resident from her flat in the northern county of Yorkshire, the court heard.

Wai, of Staines-upon-Thames, southwest of the capital — who was known to associates as Fatboy — and Yuen, of Hackney in east London, had both denied wrongdoing.

The case comes in the wake of tens of thousands of people, including democracy activists wanted by Chinese authorities, moving to Britain since Hong Kong enacted a draconian National Security Law in mid-2020.