Author of Home Office report on China reveals attempts to compromise him

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 saidmy 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.’”