A decision to revoke the visas of foreign nationals was unlawful and should be quashed as it didn’t specifically address their human rights, their advocate told a court.

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 under immigration rules relating to national security.

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

But the claimants have still not been given the full reason for the decision, although they were supplied further information in September which referred to a ‘strong belief by the Isle of Man Constabulary in the existence and operation of an intricate network of Sino-centric organised crime’.

The high court has previously heard of alleged links to e-gaming firm King Gaming, which was raided by police in April 2024 as part of a fraud and international money laundering investigation.

When the case returned to court on Thursday, advocates for the claimants, Winston Taylor, said: ‘We say the decision is unlawful and should be quashed.’

He said it did not meet the requirements as it didn’t set out the reasons for the revocation and the original decision letter did not refer to the claimants’ rights under the European Court of Human Rights including the Article 8 right to family life.

Hannah Quinn, for the Treasury, insisted that national security considerations had ‘over-ridden’ Article 8 rights. She added that such rights had been addressed but conceded that they had not been specifically cited in the decision notice.

The Treasury is seeking to have the doleance claims dealt with by way of public interest immunity - a process which allows the government to withhold information from disclosure if it is considered to harm the public interest.

It argues this would ensure the confidential reasons for the decision, including sensitive intelligence, would be kept out of the public domain and away from the claimants.

But Mr Taylor claimed significant difficulties would arise if the court went down the route of public interest immunity.

Deemster Andrew Corlett made an order requesting Treasury produce a public interest immunity certificate by January 30.

And he said to expedite matters he was asking Treasury to investigate whether open source materials could be provided and other documents dealt with by way of redaction or ‘gisting’.

Speaking after an earlier hearing, Mr Wang and his wife denied having had any involvement with King Gaming or its allied companies, or in any criminality.

Mr Wang was an investor in fintech company Blackfridge which had its financial services licence temporarily suspended by the island’s regulator in January last year.

Zhijun Sun was the firm’s chief executive officer.

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

Giving a short judgment to set out ‘the way forward in this complicated case’, Deemster Corlett said he would consider the appointment of an independent adviser.