Did British ‘spy’ wanted by the FBI for smuggling advanced weaponry flee to China in a private jet?

By ABUL TAHER and CAROLINE GRAHAM

Published: 19:32 EST, 8 November 2025 | Updated: 20:29 EST, 8 November 2025

A British businessman who is facing extradition to America for being an alleged Chinese spy is thought to have fled to Beijing on a private jet after escaping house arrest in Serbia.

John Miller and his Chinese ‘handler’ Cui Guanghai were arrested in Belgrade by Serbian police at the request of the FBI, which accuses both agents of trying to smuggle advanced weapons from the US to the Beijing regime.

Both are also accused of harassing a Los Angeles-based Chinese artist who was a vocal critic of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The pair were arrested at Belgrade’s Hyatt Regency Hotel in April - hours before they were about to catch a flight to Beijing - and were detained in prison at the orders of a Serbian judge.

But a month later, the pair were moved to house arrest and placed in two separate flats in Belgrade, and required to wear electronic ankle tags all the time.

But Miller, 63, a recruitment specialist from Tunbridge Wells, and Cui - a suspected senior Chinese intelligence chief - fled house arrest on August 4th, and their whereabouts has been unknown since.

But this weekend, the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), one of Serbia’s most respected news organisations, reported that Miller and Cui fled to Beijing on a private Gulfstream G550 jet owned by a Chinese company called Deer Jet.

Through interviews with sensitive Serbian security sources, BIRN established that Miller and Cui damaged their electronic tags at 12.43am and 12.54am on the morning of August 4th, which stopped signals being sent to the Criminal Sanctions Enforcement Directorate, triggering security alarms.

British businessmna John Miller, pictured, and his Chinese ‘handler’ Cui Guanghai were arrested in Belgrade by Serbian police at the request of the FBI

Both are also accused of harassing a Los Angeles-based Chinese artist who was a vocal critic of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, pictured

But within an hour of the alarms going off, the men had fled their apartments in central Belgrade and managed to get to the city’s Nikola Tesla airport, where the Deer Jet plane was waiting.

Flight records on the FlightRadar24 platform show that the Deer Jet Gulfstream lifted off from the airport at 1.56am and flew a direct nine-hour flight to Beijing, crossing over Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia and Kazakhstan, before entering Chinese airspace.

The data also shows that the same plane had flown from Hanghzou, China, to Farnborough airport in Hampshire on August 1st, and flew to Belgrade the following day.

It then waited at the Belgrade airport for two days until its early morning flight to Beijing on August 4th. The flight records also show that the Deer Jet plane flew back to Farnborough airport the following day from Beijing.

The Serbian government has refused to comment on the story published by BIRN, but it is believed that the Deer Jet flight and its passenger list from that night is the focus of international investigations.

Deer Jet, which has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, did not respond to questions from the Mail on Sunday.

Both the Departments of Justice and the FBI in the US also refused to comment. If Miller and Cui were extradited to the US, they could have faced jail terms of up to 40 years each, with 20 years alone for trying smuggle weapons to China in breach of the Violation of the Arms Export Control Act.

FBI indictment papers accused the pair of trying to smuggle missile launchers, air-defence radars and Black Hornet microdrones, that can secretly fly within feet of enemy soldiers, from the US to China.

The documents reveal that Miller referred to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as ‘the Boss’, which demonstrated his ‘awareness that he was acting at the direction and control of the [Chinese] government.’

The two men were also accused of harassing a Chinese-American artist called Hui Bo, who made semi-naked sculptures of Xi Jinping and his wife from sand.