Meet 'Brother Cow', the millionaire restaurant tycoon and alleged mobster who is said to be spreading his influence from London's Chinatown... and how ignorance over 'community relations' allows triad gangs to operate in Britain

Published: 19:22, 18 August 2026 | Updated: 19:22, 18 August 2026 The window display of the Royal China restaurant in London’s Chinatown includes a ceramic figurine of a Chinese Mudman – a happy, yoke-carrying character much revered in Chinese folklore as a symbol of wealth, longevity and good fortune. It certainly appears to have smiled benevolently on To Ming Lam, the millionaire founder of the Royal China Group, friend of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and alleged mobster. ‘Royal China has been driven by a simple belief, that only the very best is good enough,’ states the group’s website, before listing all the accolades and awards it has won for its famous dim sum. But away from the kitchen, the group’s achievements are darker. Between 2018 and 2024, its flagship restaurant on Baker Street was fined almost £500,000 for employing at least 20 illegal workers. One immigration officer described the venue as ‘the worst licensed premises in Westminster’. Prior to that, three of the group’s five restaurants were smashed up, with windows shattered and paint splattered on walls, in what police characterised as a dispute between rival gangs – though the case was never solved. Lam himself has been dogged by accusations that he is a senior figure in the 14K triad, a notorious secret society with links to organised crime – though there is no evidence that he has committed any criminal offences. What is not in doubt is Lam’s close links to the Chinese authorities. ‘Few individuals have in recent years been honoured so conspicuously by the Chinese Communist Party as Lam,’ according to groundbreaking research by UK-China Transparency (UKCT), a charity that seeks to shed light on opaque British ties with China. Lam is considered ‘a powerful and intimidating figure’, the research reveals, and ‘people with knowledge of London’s Chinatown community are afraid of him’. He has also been astute with his largesse – during the Covid-19 pandemic, his companies made thousands of pounds worth of PPE donations, including to Transport for London, Brent Council and the Metropolitan Police’s elite Flying Squad – the very organisation charged with countering organised crime. To Ming Lam, millionaire founder of the Royal China Group and an alleged mobster (centre) The window display at the Royal China Restaurant in central London, featuring a Mudman Before Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper was forcibly shut down in 2021 and its founder Jimmy Lai jailed on trumped up security charges, it ran stories naming Lam as an underworld figure or maangyan (‘tough guy’ or ‘mighty man’), and Chinese state media has used the moniker ‘Brother Cow’. Such nicknames are commonly used in underground circles, though they are not of course necessarily indicative of gang membership. Earlier this year, Lam’s alleged 14K links were referenced in evidence presented at a national security trial at the Old Bailey that led to the jailing of two men for spying on behalf of Hong Kong and ultimately China, targeting prominent Hong Kong exiles in the UK. The reference came in phone records where one of the spies and his handler discuss asking triad members to attack a leading Hong Kong activist. The handler explains that Lam ‘was known’ to have been in the 14K. The two jailed spies have been linked in other ways to Lam. Bill Yuen Chung-biu, who worked as a manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, attended meetings of groups associated with the Royal China boss. Peter Wai Chi-leung led a dragon dance troupe sponsored by Lam’s Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall in Colindale. The troupe participated in events that included the Lord Mayor’s show, Chinatown celebrations – and even performed in Downing Street. Evidence heard at the trial also suggested that Wai worked as a security guard for one of Lam’s family businesses, although there is no suggestion that Lam was involved in or had any knowledge of the espionage activities. UKCT also describes how a string of business partners of Lam in Hong Kong and Macau were found guilty of offences including bribery, corruption and foreign interference. Lam was listed as a director of a company that owned a casino and a hotel, the latter frequented by prostitutes and senior officials of the People’s Liberation Army, according to a report by a former senior Hong Kong police officer. Again, there is no evidence that Lam was involved or had knowledge of their criminal activity. Lam has worked energetically on issues close to the heart of the CCP – leading events and rallies backing the ‘reunification of the ancestor-land’, backing the Party’s position on the destruction of democratic rights in Hong Kong and the acquisition of Taiwan and huge swathes of the South China Sea. He is a member of groups closely linked to the Communist Party, including Promotion of China Re-Unification in the UK, and he heads the Heung Yee Kuk, a body that represents areas of Hong Kong’s New Territories. In that capacity he has met repeatedly with ‘overseas Chinese affairs’ officials at the Chinese Embassy in London. He was invited as the sole UK representative to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing, a Communist Party advisory group. He sat beside the Chinese ambassador at a dinner celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, while the Chinese Embassy in 2024 pictured him as one of three ‘overseas Chinese community leaders’ at that year’s Chinese New Year celebration. Lam is also honorary president for life of the UK Chinese Sports Federation, which has senior employees of a London casino on its board and organises dragon dance displays across Britain, interacting with Chinese diplomats, according to the UKCT research. In many ways, Lam is a model worker for China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), the shadowy organisation that has been vastly expanded under President Xi Jinping to spread Beijing’s influence internationally. It is an opaque organisation, run from a large, nameless compound next to Party headquarters in Beijing, and operates in parallel with China’s conventional espionage agencies. Much of its work is covert, using front organisations or individuals to funnel money and favours in an effort to promote the Party’s interests and shape opinion in its favour. There have been a string of high-profile cases – including that of Yang Tengbo, the businessman who became a confidant of then Prince Andrew, and Christine Lee, a lawyer active in a string of Chinese business and community organisations and accused by MI5 of political interference. Both were allegedly working for the UFWD. Chung Biu Yuen and, right, Chi Leung Wai were convicted for spying on behalf of China Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was jailed for 20 years for 'colluding with foreign forces' Mao Zedong once described ‘united front’ work as a ‘magic weapon’, alongside armed struggle and party-building, and so-called ‘patriots’ among the Chinese diaspora have been a particular target for enlistment. The CCP operates a vast and growing influence operation in Britain. Shortly before then Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to Beijing earlier this year, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China estimated that China has established a network of more than 75 covert influence outposts across the UK, embedded in universities, businesses and diaspora groups. The aim being to ‘cultivate elites, shape debate and suppress criticism of Beijing’. The arrival in Britain of more than 170,000 Hongkongers fleeing repression in the former British colony had complicated Beijing’s united front work but also made it more vital, which perhaps explains the mounting evidence of front organisations – and organised crime groups – being used to spy on and intimidate the new arrivals, who are overwhelmingly anti-communist. For their part, many Hongkongers are frustrated by their dealings with the UK police, who they believe have failed to understand the complexity and diversity of the Chinese community in the UK. One prominent exile described to me how he even struggled to explain to police the difference between Hongkongers and Chinese mainlanders – who speak different languages. He told me how the police too often equate ‘community relations’ with shaking hands in Britain’s Chinatowns or taking part in New Year festivities, even though some of the most prominent ‘community groups’ in these areas are little more than fronts for the Chinese Communist Party. This concern is echoed by research sponsored by the Home Office and declassified earlier this year, which warns that the police have a very poor understanding of Chinese organised crime groups and lack the linguistic and cultural skills to penetrate them. The research, by David Wilson, now West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit lead for modern slavery and organised immigration crime, includes an anonymised interview with one officer, who says: ‘We always talk about dismantling OCGs [organised crime groups] but in terms of the Chinese it is too big, we have no chance.’ Wilson’s research draws explicit links between the Communist Party and its diplomats and criminal gangs, noting that, ‘the relationship in the UK between the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and COCGs [Chinese Organised Crime Groups] is likely deeper and more sinister than previously assessed’ – so much so that the report describes these links as a threat to national security. Evidence suggests that the overwhelming priority of the Party is united front work, and it is prepared to ignore criminal activities or even leverage the gangs for its own purposes if they help further China’s interests. The 14K triad, with which Lam allegedly has connections, is a case in point. I first came across the 14K when I was a correspondent in Hong Kong covering the ‘triad wars’ of the late 1990s in neighbouring Macau. They were – and remain – one of the world’s biggest and most powerful triad gangs and back then were fighting for control of the VIP rooms that are the most lucrative part of the casinos that dominate the Macau economy. This is where the ‘high-rollers’, including top communist party officials, came to gamble, gambling being illegal in mainland China. The comrades often crossed the border with suitcases of ill-gotten cash. The violence became so intense that the then Portuguese authorities cracked down hard. The leader – the ‘Dragon Head’ – of the 14K in Macau, Wan Kuok-koi, better known as Broken Tooth, was jailed for crimes including murder, car-bombing, arms smuggling, money laundering, human trafficking, leadership of a criminal organisation and racketeering. By the time he was released in 2012, Macau had been handed back to China and Broken Tooth set himself up as a ‘legitimate’ businessman in Cambodia, spouting loyalty to the Communist Party and investing under the umbrella of the Party’s Belt and Road Initiative, a vehicle for overseas influence. Law enforcement officials assume that a deal was struck with party officials who saw value in his dubious skills and connections, though in 2020 he was sanctioned by the US as a ‘corrupt actor’. The Treasury Department said he remained a leader of the 14K, which engaged in ‘drug trafficking, illegal gambling, racketeering, human trafficking’, in addition to ‘bribery, corruption and graft’. It also noted that he was by then a member of the Communist Party’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the advisory body to which To Ming Lam was also invited. He has also been implicated in the Mekong region’s vast online scamming industry. Broken Tooth is one of the more brazen examples of the Party protecting and making use of criminal ‘assets’. The challenge facing the UK police is not only to understand these criminal links, but to get to grips with the aggressive nature of Beijing’s influence operations within the Chinese community. At least the police have now identified the threat. ‘Organised crime groups from China are highly likely among the most significant threats to the UK, with roles in fraud compounds, drug precursor supply, synthetic opioids, and underground banking,’ according to the National Crime Agency’s 2026 strategic assessment. While UKCT believes its research provides evidence of ‘systematic linkages between the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese officials in the UK on the one hand, and UK-based individuals with links to the shadow economy, dubious business practices or crime on the other’. In the window of the Royal China restaurant in London’s Chinatown, the Chinese Mudman is flanked by a large brass money frog sitting on a pile of coins. In Chinese folklore, the frog is regarded as an essential talisman for expanding a business. A feng shui master will tell you that the frog should look inwards as a sign of money flowing into the household or business. This one was facing outwards. Traditionalists might see that as a bad omen, yet for now Lam’s talismans have served him well. He did not respond to requests by The Daily Mail to respond to the accusations against him. The questions about his criminal links remain just that – questions. But they will persist. And his Communist Party links are a clear warning about the need for caution in embracing groups with dubious claim to represent the diverse Chinese community. Ian Williams is author of Vampire State: The Rise And Fall Of The Chinese Economy