Lawyer Christine Lee loses case against UK’s MI5 over Chinese spy alert
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that the domestic spy agency’s decision did not breach her human rights
A woman who was branded a Chinese spy by Britain’s MI5 has lost her case to sue the domestic spy agency over an alert issued to politicians which said she was an agent working for Beijing, a London tribunal ruled on Tuesday.
The warning was circulated to lawmakers by the House of Commons speaker, who said MI5 had found that Lee had “facilitated financial donations to serving and aspiring parliamentarians on behalf of foreign nationals based in Hong Kong and mainland China”.
Lee was born in Hong Kong and founded a firm providing consultancy services to Chinese migrants. She helped set up a parliamentary committee, chaired by Barry Gardiner, a lawmaker for the then opposition Labour Party, designed to discuss issues affecting the Chinese community in Britain.
Gardiner said he had received hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from her, and her son had worked in his office.
She denied the MI5 allegations and sued the spy agency for unspecified damages, arguing the agency had acted unlawfully and unreasonably by labelling her a risk to the state without any prior finding of guilt.
