A British man who was charged with spying for China has told the BBC he was a "convenient fall guy" for UK police and security services who wanted to put espionage threats by foreign states "on the map". Chris Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, has shared more than 6,000 messages with us revealing how a Chinese official sought information about sensitive political matters in the UK - including the 2022 Tory leadership battle to decide the next prime minister. The messages show how Cash's friend in China, Chris Berry - with whom he had been sharing information - dramatically described a "secret" meeting between Berry and a high-ranking Chinese official.
Berry said he had been told that China was concerned about how a British MP it had sanctioned might be promoted to a cabinet role. The messages also reveal how Cash used his friend as a reference during vetting for a parliamentary pass - which was approved. In his first interview since his acquittal, which sparked a political row over the government's failure to designate China as a "threat", Cash says he would "never do anything" to harm UK national security.
But he admits he was "unprofessional and naive" to send "gossiping" texts to his friend, whom he met in 2018 when they both taught English in a school in China. Although the trove of messages shows him discussing sensitive topics, there is no evidence in them that Cash was paid by, or sympathetic to, the Chinese Communist Party. With the government having previously said that Chinese spies were targeting UK officials across the political, defence and business sectors with increasingly sophisticated espionage operations, Cash believes his case was pursued as a warning to others.
Berry declined to comment on this story, but at the time of his acquittal said he denied any wrongdoing and that he had been "unfairly subjected to a trial by media". He said he had provided reports to a Chinese company, which he believed had clients seeking to develop trading links with the UK, and those reports contained no classified information and relied on public sources. Cash returned to the UK in 2019, saying in his resignation message for his job in China that he felt "guilty sitting back and participating in a system that I am uncomfortable with".
He later became the director of a small policy group run by China-sceptic Conservative MPs in Westminster. Meanwhile, Berry stayed in China writing reports for a large consultancy which, like many Chinese companies, has links to the government. The espionage row that rocked Westminster Inside the China Spy Case on the BBC News YouTube channel, external UK security services alleged that information from the men's messages, sent on the encrypted messaging app Signal between January 2022 and March 2023, had been passed to people linked to the Chinese state.
Both men were charged with espionage but consistently maintained their innocence. England and Wales' top prosecutor said the case had collapsed last autumn because government officials could not say China had been classed as an "enemy" at the time. This prompted accusations of UK political interference to placate the Chinese government.
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