UK authorities are due in court on Monday to press their case for keeping £10.6 million worth of watches and jewelry from Thet Li, the alleged finance chief of the Prince Group. They are also seeking to retain £92,570 in cash that was taken from him. The hearing is the next test of whether the seized items can continue to be held as the wider proceedings around the group's alleged network move forward.

Foreign Office probe froze £8.9 million penthouse overlooking Buckingham Palace

Li, 39, bought the 13th-floor flat, which overlooks Buckingham Palace near St James's Park, for £8.9 million in 2022. The London penthouse is already frozen. A Foreign Office investigation has led to its entry at the Land Registry being subject to a freezing order. While such an order remains in place, it bars an owner from selling or renting out the property.

According to UK authorities, Li is a "key lieutenant" of Chen Zhi, the leader of Prince Group, and is said to control the flow of money through the group's worldwide operations.

Freezing orders reach Chen Zhi's £100 million City of London office

Chen's assets in the capital are also frozen. The orders include a St John's Wood mansion valued at £12 million and a City of London office block worth £100 million. Taken together, the London properties named in the freezing orders are worth more than £200 million.

Wu An Ming, described as Chen's second in command, is also affected. Authorities have frozen his Holland Park mansion, worth £30 million, along with a £53 million Belgravia townhouse held in the name of a woman they say is his wife. Wu was reportedly arrested in Japan in June.

Li's links also extend to the Isle of Man. Working with the FBI, police there searched two homes that appear to belong to him last October, and gaming licenses Prince Group held on the island were allegedly used to launder its proceeds.

The UK believes Prince Group is a front for widespread online fraud, spanning romance scams and so-called pig butchering investment schemes, long-con frauds in which victims are groomed online and steered into fake investment platforms. The United Nations estimates that more than 100,000 trafficked workers are held in its operations.

Li was sanctioned by the US Treasury in October 2025 as one of 146 Prince Group targets. The Treasury labeled him a "de facto illicit finance CFO" involved in "bulk cash smuggling and managing dirty money." London followed in March, listing him under its global human rights sanctions regime.

The US Justice Department has moved to forfeit some 127,271 Bitcoin linked to the group, then worth about $15 billion. Cryptopolitan reported that Chen was arrested in January in Cambodia and extradited to China. In May, the High Court in Hong Kong froze about $1.1 billion in assets linked to Chen, Li, and dozens companies, including HK$172 million held by Li. With the Monday hearing, the US forfeiture bid, and the Hong Kong freeze all pending, the case spans enforcement actions in at least four jurisdictions.

Prince Group has denied the claims. It said last year that it "categorically rejects the notion that it or its chairman, Chen Zhi, has engaged in any unlawful activity."