Espionage Case Dropped: Man at Center Admitted Supplying Info to Non-Commercial Client
A controversial Chinese espionage case, abruptly abandoned by prosecutors in September, involved a man who appeared aware he was providing information to a client with opaque origins, according to messages reviewed by The Guardian. The case against Christopher Berry and former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash centered on allegations of passing state secrets to China, but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) unexpectedly dropped all charges, sparking widespread debate about national security and evidence handling.
The revelations stem from an expert report compiled for Berry’s defense team by Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London. The report, initially leaked to the Double Jeopardy podcast hosted by legal figures Tim Owen KC and former Director of Public Prosecutions Ken MacDonald KC, details a series of messages suggesting Berry understood his work was not purely commercial. Brown has, at the request of Berry’s legal team, refrained from wider distribution of the full report.
In August 2022, Berry sent a voice note stating, “they want me to work for them directly instead of going through the company.” This message, along with others, paints a picture of a growing awareness that his client’s motivations extended beyond typical business interests. Berry and Cash consistently maintained their innocence throughout the investigation and declined to offer further comment on Monday through legal counsel.
The charges, brought in April 2024, related to over 30 reports Berry authored for a Chinese contact between December 2021 and February 2023. The Guardian reports Berry was compensated approximately £20,000 for these reports, while Cash received no financial remuneration. Berry previously stated, on October 16th, that his reports were “provided to a Chinese company which I believed had clients wishing to develop trading links with the UK,” and contained no classified information, relying instead on publicly available data and “political conjecture.”
However, the CPS argued the reports were commissioned by “an individual assessed to be a Chinese intelligence agent.” Brown’s report, seen by The Guardian, contains messages indicating Berry recognized the unusual nature of some of his contacts. On July 15, 2022, Berry attended a meeting with someone described as requiring “some levels of secrecy,” and later admitted to needing to search online to identify the individual.
Following this meeting, Cash reportedly texted Berry, “You’re in spy territory now,” according to a government witness statement. Cash has since expressed concern that publicly released statements lack the full context that would have been presented at trial.
The CPS also alleged Berry met with Cai Qi, then the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary for Beijing and a member of the CCP’s Politburo. Berry vehemently denies this encounter, and China experts, including Brown, find it improbable that someone of Cai’s stature – now effectively chief of staff to Chinese President Xi Jinping – would meet with a relatively unknown individual like Berry. At the time of the alleged meeting in Hangzhou, Cai was reportedly in Beijing, a two-hour flight away.
Further messages reveal a request from the “politburo guy” – understood by Cash to refer to a general CCP member rather than a member of the 24-man Politburo – on November 29, 2022, to investigate whether then-UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was secretly funding or supporting the “white paper revolution” protests. These protests, erupting across China in response to harsh zero-Covid policies, had gained international attention. Berry responded to Cash, stating, “It’s funny that he thinks I would know if rishi had done it. I basically just summarize guardian articles most of the time.”
The WhatsApp evidence, reportedly exceeding 1,000 pages, also includes instances of Berry and Cash jokingly discussing the possibility of disseminating disinformation to destabilize the Chinese government. In May 2022, Berry asked Cash if he should “throw in some red herrings to troll” when compiling a list of UK think tanks influencing China policy. Later, in November 2022, Berry expressed a desire to “make them [the Chinese] do something almost fully retarded just to see what we can get them to do just by telling them.”
The CPS’s decision to drop the charges against both men on September 15th ignited a significant controversy, raising questions about the strength of the evidence and the handling of a sensitive national security case. The full implications of this case, and the extent of any potential foreign influence, remain under scrutiny.
