A British man once accused of spying for China told the BBC that he had become a "convenient scapegoat" for British police and intelligence services. He believes the authorities hope to draw more attention to the threat posed by foreign espionage.
Former British parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash provided more than 6,000 messages to the BBC, revealing how a Chinese official tried to obtain intelligence on sensitive British political matters, including the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election to determine the next prime minister.
The messages show that Cash has been providing information to a friend in China, Christopher Berry, who once described a "secret" meeting with a senior Chinese official in dramatic terms.
Berry said the other party told him that China was concerned that a British MP who was sanctioned by China might be appointed as a cabinet minister.
The information also revealed that Cash listed Berry as a recommender when he applied for a congressional pass to undergo a background check, and the application was ultimately approved.
Berry and Cash were also charged with espionage. Both men have always maintained their innocence.
This is Cash's first interview since the charges were dropped. The withdrawal of charges in the case caused political controversy, focusing on the fact that the British government did not officially define China as a "threat".
Cash said he would "never do anything" to jeopardize Britain's national security.
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But he admitted that it was "unprofessional and naive" for him to send some "gossip" messages to his friends. The two met in 2018 when they were teaching English at a school in China.
Although the messages showed Cash discussing sensitive issues, there was no evidence that he had received payment or was politically sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party.
image copyrightChris Cash
The British government has previously stated that Chinese spies are using increasingly sophisticated intelligence operations to target British political, defense and business figures. Cash believes authorities pursued his case to serve as a warning to others.
Berry declined to comment for this article, but he said when the charges were dropped that he denied any wrongdoing and said he was subjected to a "media trial" and was treated unfairly.
He said he had provided reports to a Chinese company and believed that its clients wanted to establish trade links with the UK. He emphasized that the report did not involve confidential information and that the contents were all derived from public information.
Cash returned to the UK in 2019. In a message when he resigned from his job in China, he said he "felt guilty for standing by and participating in a system that made me uncomfortable."
He later became director of a small policy research organization in the British Parliament. The group is run by Conservative MPs who are skeptical of China.
Meanwhile, Berry stayed in China, writing reports for a large consulting firm. Like many Chinese businesses, the company has ties to the government.
British intelligence agencies allege that the information exchanged between the two men through the encrypted messaging app Signal between January 2022 and March 2023 was forwarded to people with ties to the Chinese government.
The most senior prosecutor in England and Wales said the case fell through last fall because government officials were unable to confirm whether China was considered an "enemy" by Britain at the time of the case.
This triggered accusations that the British government was engaging in political interference to appease the Chinese government.
China has previously described the espionage accusations as "arbitrarily fabricated and malicious slander."
"A psychological chess game"
The most striking part of the message Cash gave to the BBC was Berry's description of his meeting with a senior Chinese official in the summer of 2022. The official hoped for "deeper cooperation" between the two sides.
In the voice message, Berry said colleagues told him before the meeting that the official was interested in the report he was writing. The reports include details of UK foreign policy towards China.
Berry said in the voice message that he was shocked at first, but then decided: "I thought it would be interesting to go and see... I didn't really plan to do anything."
Berry told Cash that he was driven to a government-owned villa in a large compound.
He described the whole experience as "like a psychological chess game" and "like a test."
When serving tea, he hid his hands under the table: "I don't want the other person to see if I'm nervous. I'll try to see if my hands are shaking first, and then I'll drink the tea."
Berry said the senior Chinese official asked him through a translator "about the current situation in the UK and about the Conservative Party leadership election."
At that time, Boris Johnson had just announced his resignation as British Prime Minister, and the Conservative Party was holding a leadership election, which was ultimately won by Liz Truss.
Berry said he jokingly tested the host of the meeting and asked which candidate China wanted to win, but the interpreter did not translate his question.
"Then the person in charge shook my hand to signal the end of the meeting," Berry told Cash.
After receiving the voice message, Cash responded with a text the next day: "My friend, you have just been recruited by the elite." He continued: "You have now entered the realm of espionage activities."
In many media reports, the information, which had previously been disclosed in government witness statements, was seen as solid evidence that Cash knew that friends were passing information to the Chinese government.
But Cash insisted that it was just a "laughing joke" because he had always known that Berry was "a staunch critic of the Chinese Communist Party."
He said that the next morning, he joked that Berry might be spying for Britain, which got him into trouble with the Chinese authorities.
Cash texted: "Keep a good relationship with him... maybe we will need you in the future."
"I don't believe he knowingly used me to spy on British intelligence for China," Cash said.
"I trust my friends... I really wish I could have noticed the danger earlier, discovered the problem in time, and cut off all contact."
"The background is bigger than I thought."
So, who is the mysterious official Berry met with?
A few hours later, Berry texted Cash: "I found out who this guy is. He's bigger than I thought."
Berry then sent a link to Cai Qi’s Wikipedia page. Cai Qi was already one of China's most influential politicians and now serves as the de facto chief of staff to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
image copyrightAFP via Getty Images
It remains unclear whether Berry correctly identified the person he was meeting with. He has since questioned his assertion that he had met with senior officials like Cai Qi.
But what is certain is that Berry believed at the time that he might have met a figure with a very high position in the Chinese political system.
For Cash, the unusual meeting did not alarm him.
When the BBC asked him why he was not suspicious, he replied: "Because I really didn't think there was anything special about that meeting."
We asked Cash why his friend was invited to such a meeting.
He said: "In China, strange things happen from time to time... We often have contact with some very high-level figures in the Chinese Communist Party."
When a reporter asked him if he had seen the content of the Wikipedia link, Cash said he had only "browsed it briefly," adding that the page described Cai Qi as a judge and provincial official.
"I just thought it was a strange meeting, someone taking an interest in his work," he said.
Six months later, Berry said in a text message that he had received information from "a fairly reliable source" that "cannot be quoted publicly": China was considering lifting sanctions on Tom Tugendhat. Dong Qinda is one of the Conservative MPs on the China Research Group where Cash serves.
Berry wrote that China would take this step as long as the West "continues to send signals that it is willing to cooperate."
He said China believed that it would be an "extremely embarrassing" situation if Tugendat became prime minister or foreign minister while still subject to Chinese sanctions.
During the meeting in the summer of 2022, Dong Qinda, who is skeptical of China, was regarded as a possible candidate to succeed Johnson as Prime Minister or become the British Foreign Secretary.
He was later appointed Minister of State for Security Affairs by Zhuo Huisi, and Beijing lifted sanctions against him in January 2026.
Berry seems to be conveying news about China's foreign policy to Cash. Does this make Cash uneasy?
Cash said he thought Berry heard the information from informal sources within the company because the company was doing business with the United Kingdom.
He said he never doubted his friend's trustworthiness and even listed Berry as a recommender when applying for a security pass to the Palace of Westminster.
The pass was eventually approved. In early 2023, about two weeks before the two were arrested, Cash invited Berry to have lunch with Congress.
That was the last time the two men spoke face to face.
"Totally shocked"
Cash recalled that one morning in March, he was still lying in bed and woke up when he heard the sound of the car door closing around 5:45 a.m.
Within seconds, four British counter-terrorism officers burst into his bedroom at his parents' home in Edinburgh.
"They told me to sit up and not touch anything and then said I was being arrested on suspicion of breaching the Official Secrets Act," Cash said.
"I was in complete shock... shaking all over... my mother was completely out of control."
Cash said officers made him put on the same dirty clothes he had worn that weekend, handcuffed him and escorted him into an unmarked car. He was later sent to London.
Berry was also arrested the same day.
Exactly when, how and why British intelligence services became interested in communications between the two friends remains unclear.
However, Berry was stopped and questioned by counter-terrorism police officers at Heathrow Airport. It is likely that the intelligence services gained a deeper understanding of the relationship between the two after this incident.
At that time, authorities took away Berry's laptop and phone, which may have allowed them to download his Signal chat history.
Berry later texted Cash to tell him.
Cash said he did not feel alarmed by this: "I thought it was just a routine... After all, he lived in China."
As the investigation deepened, the authorities apparently believed that Cash and Berry had been exchanging information informally, but that these behaviors were dangerous and the information involved was "prejudicial to the security and interests of the United Kingdom."
The charges are based on 6,273 messages between the two men, the same messages Cash has now handed over to the BBC. Cash's lawyer confirmed to the BBC that the messages were true.
This batch of messages covers the period after Cash joined the China Research Group. The group was founded by Dong Qinda and another Conservative MP Alicia Kearns.
At the same time, Berry was employed by a Chinese company called Strong, part of his job was to write political and economic reports for clients.
According to court documents, Berry allegedly prepared 34 reports for a man with ties to China's state intelligence agency, relaying information provided to him by Cash.
Strong did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.
The China Research Group's offices are across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, but Cash often holds meetings inside Parliament.
Cash did not have a government security clearance and there is no evidence that he had access to classified documents.
Although they are thousands of miles apart, the two have remained in close contact, often exchanging messages on a daily basis.
Information reviewed by the BBC shows that the two discussed topics including sanctions against China, technology company Huawei, human rights, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and British foreign policy.
Cash said he uses Signal to communicate with nearly all of his contacts in China, mainly "to protect them," because he said discussing the government could "get people into trouble" in China.
He and Berry did not use the app's "auto-disappear" feature.
Cash said much of the information they discussed was available from public sources. To prove this, he provided the BBC with a detailed spreadsheet listing relevant links and references.
But he sometimes shared with Berry his observations and impressions from Westminster meetings and private discussions.
In 12 of these messages, he marked the information as "off the record" or "very off the record" before disclosing it to Berry.
Cash said it was "just me being excited to share with him what I was doing at work."
One of the messages mentioned some views that Dame Caroline Wilson, the then British ambassador to China, allegedly expressed privately when discussing China's influence on British universities with the China Research Group.
Cash also sent messages to Berry sharing unsubstantiated rumors about the sex lives of two British cabinet ministers.
There is currently no evidence that Berry passed on these messages to his Chinese colleagues.
Cash said he always believed such exchanges were just general political discussions and "we were not dealing with classified information."
Charges dropped, but reputation still in disgrace
Cash's lawyers have told him that the police investigation will be over in six months and that he will soon be able to return to his normal life.
However, in September 2023, six months after the two were arrested, the Sunday Times first reported that an unidentified "spy" had been arrested in Parliament, and the case came to light.
Cash recalled that he was riding a train at the time, and the passengers around him were reading the front-page news of the newspaper, with the headline "'Chinese spy' arrested in British House of Commons."
"I really want to find a hole in the ground and crawl into it," he said.
Within 24 hours, his name and photo appeared in media reports. Both men were later charged with espionage.
In September of the following year, just weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin, Cash received an unexpected call from his lawyer.
"Are you sitting down?" the lawyer asked him. "They dropped all charges."
His legal team asked the court to hold a hearing for the prosecution to formally confirm that no more evidence would be presented.
However, at London's Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey), Cash, who had just had his charges dropped, was having trouble finding anyone interested in his story.
Every time he appeared in court before, he was surrounded by a large number of reporters, but for this hearing, the media was not even notified.
Eventually, his team found a BBC reporter.
"I made my statement outside the Central Criminal Court. It was a very happy moment for me. I felt like I could finally start to let go of this and move on with my life."
But things are not that simple.
On the other side of London, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, was furious. "It was this Congress that was targeted by espionage. It was the offices of members of Congress that were infiltrated," he declared.
In the following days, political debate over the incident continued in Congress. During a heated Prime Minister's Questions session, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch claimed: "The whole thing reeks of a cover-up."
"Legally I had the charges dismissed, but then I was vilified in Congress," Cash said.
"It feels like I'm being convicted again by the court of public opinion, and the accusations are being made by people I've worked with and trusted. It's a very uncomfortable feeling."
Today, Cash's life has changed almost beyond recognition. He lost his dream job, his partner, and his closest friend from college.
"We have said before that we would be the best man at each other's wedding," Cash said. But when that friend got married last year, Cash wasn't even invited.
He also stopped communicating with Berry. "I've been applying for some basic administrative jobs lately, but I've been having trouble," Cash said.
"I feel angry and sad about how this whole thing turned out, and I feel like I was let down."
However, when asked if he felt Berry had betrayed him, Cash made no such accusation.
So, does he think his friend is spying for the Chinese government?
"He must have the opportunity to defend himself in court," Cash replied.
「我認為自己不應該妄加猜測。考慮到我自己曾受到那麼多揣測，如果我這樣做，就太虛偽了。但我們已經不是朋友。」
貝里拒絕就本篇報道置評，但在獲撤銷控罪時，他曾表示，自己的報告「涉及當時英國廣泛討論的經濟及商業議題，並以公開渠道可自由取得的資訊為基礎」。
與昔日好友一樣，卡什在法律上是無罪的，但他的聲譽無疑已遭到嚴重損害。
英國國會仍有許多人認為他們是間諜。隨着這對昔日朋友之間更多訊息如今曝光，圍繞兩人行為的爭論可能再次升溫。
「那是一段極其煎熬的經歷。」卡什說。
「但我本質上是一個樂觀的人……我對未來仍然充滿信心。」
本文原以英文撰寫，我們使用了人工智能協助翻譯，並由BBC記者在發佈前進行審核。了解更多關於我們如何使用人工智能的資訊。
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