The author of a Home Office-sponsored report on the Chinese state and organised crime in the UK was the target of failed honey traps and a suspected attempt to compromise him by a former British police officer, it is claimed.
Dr David Wilson, whose groundbreaking analysis was declassified in February, has told of multiple attempts to influence him or discredit his work as he sought to examine the policing challenges posed by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and criminal gangs.
Among the apparent attempts to interfere with Wilson’s findings – based on interviews with officials from 14 law enforcement agencies in the UK – was an approach to him by a former British police officer who had been a Chinese citizen before being naturalised in the UK, he said.
Wilson said he had been warned during early interviews with former officers in the Hong Kong police force that he would make himself a target for “honey traps or bribes” from the Chinese state and organised crime.
“Within about two weeks of getting this warning, I receive this phone call,” Wilson said. “It was someone who I loosely knew. It was an ex-Chinese citizen who was a naturalised British citizen.
“He had been part of a British law enforcement institution. He said: ‘Listen, why don’t you meet me at this specific Chinese restaurant?’ Straight away, as soon as he said that, I knew the restaurant, I knew who owned it, and I knew where this was going, because I’d been warned about it, and it was literally word for word.”
According to Wilson, the caller said he had “some people who can help you” but declined to offer any further information on their identities. “‘It doesn’t matter, there’s a few people, why don’t you come along and just see what they’ve got to say?’ I said: ‘Thanks very much, really kind of you, but actually, no.’”
Wilson, a former police inspector who is the West Midlands regional coordinator for the national Organised Immigration Crime Domestic Taskforce, said he was also targeted through his LinkedIn account as he carried out his research.
He said he had “around 20 to 25 connection requests” from women with “nothing on their profile at all, wanting to contact me – some of them clearly false personas”.
“There’s nothing on the profile. They haven’t posted anything, there was no detail. It was just a photograph of a very, very beautiful woman. Before I started, I’d been on LinkedIn for 10 years. No one ever contacted me,” Wilson said.
The most direct message, he said, was from a man who described himself as a businessman. “Someone contacted me again and said: ‘Listen, I’m very interested in what you’re doing’,” said Wilson. The man went on to claim he had “ties to the Chinese government, very close ties, and I have people who can really help you with this,” he said.
Wilson said: “It was really persistent. ‘The Chinese are such wonderful people. They’re so generous. Look at all these links that I’m sending you about the good work that they’ve done.’ I said my loyalty is to the government and to the UK, not the Chinese government. In the end, I said: ‘Listen, I’ve reported your profile to the appropriate authorities. You need to stop contacting me now.’”
Last week a bulletin was released by the Five Eyes powers – the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – highlighting an “aggressive” online strategy, including on LinkedIn, where spies for Beijing military intelligence pose as workers acting on behalf of private businesses or thinktanks.
Wilson said he believed that the approaches made to him bore the imprint of the United Front Work Department, an organ of the communist regime in China that is said to seek to suppress political dissent and shape opinion abroad.
He said: “The motivation is to mitigate your findings – which they know what they will be if you have been doing your job right – to make it more favourable to the Chinese government.
“There’s strong evidence, obviously, that Chinese organised crime is strongly linked to the Chinese government. I think it’s really difficult to untangle exactly how it’s linked”.
Wilson said that in his case it appeared there was “some sort of direction” from above. “So you’ve got Chinese women trying to compromise me, you’ve got a businessman trying to compromise me, and you’ve got someone phoning me offering me help,” he said. “So it’s more than one attempt at compromise. So we would suggest some sort of centralised will to do that.”
Wilson’s landmark report detailed links between senior members of organised criminal groups and those in the Chinese consulate and highlighted the exploitation of Chinese students by the gangs and the CCP.
“The main victims of all this will be Chinese people,” Wilson said. “The Chinese Communist party is not Chinese people.”
He added that a key facet of these networks was their low profile, which involved avoiding the use of guns on the streets and keeping out of the trafficking and smuggling of people on small boats across the Channel.
“They’re dealing with violence, they are dealing with drugs, they are dealing in organised immigration crime, but they’re doing it in such a way that they know will avoid police attention,” Wilson said.
“So that would infer a decision made at high level. The danger here is the infrastructure to bring in masses and masses of cannabis is absolutely there and being utilised. What if tomorrow the Chinese government or Chinese organised crime group said it’s going to be fentanyl?”