A court will sit in private to consider the lawfulness of a decision to revoke the visas of a number of foreign nationals on national security grounds.

Doleance claims have been issued by Zhijun Sun, Lingyan Liu, and Wei Wang and his family, seeking a review of the Treasury Minster’s decision to curtail their immigration status.

Their visas were revoked in May last year under immigration rules relating to national security.

The claimants’ continued presence in the island and UK had been deemed ‘not conducive to the public good’.

At a high court hearing this week, Deemster Andrew Corlett ruled that the doleance claim will be dealt with by way of a public interest immunity hearing, allowing the government to withhold information from disclosure if it is considered to harm the public interest.

Neither the claimants and their lawyer nor the media will be allowed to attend the hearing.

None of the individuals involved, who had all been resident in the island for several years, have been informed of the exact reasons why their visas were revoked - although they were supplied further information in September.

This indicated that ‘some or all’ of the reasons appear to be related to King Gaming, which was raided in 2024 as part of a fraud and international money laundering investigation.

The court has previously heard that the then Treasury Minister Dr Alex Allinson had signed off a memorandum removing the claimants’ right of appeal in the interests of national security.

Returning to court this week, Winston Taylor, representing the claimants, argued that the decision notice failed to address human rights and so rendered it unlawful.

He said it needed to be quashed and remitted back to the decision maker.

Mr Taylor said the lack of reference in the notice to the European Convention on Human Rights didn’t in itself render it unlawful but there was no evidence that Article 8 rights were even considered.

But Anna Heeley, representing the Treasury, said the the court must consider the evidence behind the decision notice first and until a public interest immunity hearing had taken place, the court could not rule on Mr Taylor’s application.

Deemster Andrew Corlett described that argument as ‘compelling’.

‘The time has come for me to consider the evidence behind the decision,’ he said.

Deemster Corlett said the public interest immunity hearing should take place as soon as possible as the next stage of the ‘somewhat torturous’ proceedings.

He set a date of March 31 for the hearing.

The Wangs are still in the island on immigration bail but the other claimants are not.

Mr Sun, who moved to the Isle of Man in 2021-22, is now living in St Lucia.

Lingyan Liu, who came here in 2022-23, had been in the Far East when her immigration status was rescinded and was not allowed to return, the court heard previously.

Mr Wang and his wife deny having had any involvement with King Gaming or its allied companies, or having knowledge of its beneficial owner, Chinese national Bill Morgan aka Liang Lingfei.