Lai, 75, was jailed for 5 years and 9 months, and fined 2 million Hong Kong dollars ($257,000) on a fraud cost.
Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai has acquired a brand new jail sentence of 5 years and 9 months after being discovered responsible of fraud in a contractual dispute – the most recent in a collection of instances towards outstanding activists that critics say are aimed toward snuffing out dissent within the metropolis.
Lai, the 75-year-old founding father of the now-shuttered Apple Day by day newspaper, had lately accomplished a 20-month jail time period ensuing from a number of convictions for his half in pro-democracy protests and unauthorised assemblies in Hong Kong.
First arrested throughout a crackdown on the town’s pro-democracy motion following widespread protests in 2019 and underneath a draconian Nationwide Safety Legislation imposed by Beijing, Lai was additionally fined 2 million Hong Kong dollars ($257,000) and banned from managing firms for eight years on Saturday.
His media firm, Subsequent Digital, had revealed the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Day by day, which was pressured to shut following the arrests of its high executives, editors and journalists final 12 months. Whereas Lai’s earlier convictions had been associated to his function within the big democracy protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019, the most recent case concerned considered one of his firms violating the phrases of the lease on his newspaper’s places of work.
He additionally faces a attainable life sentence at his upcoming trial on separate nationwide safety costs.
Lai and the previous Apple Day by day government Wong Wai-keung had been each discovered responsible of fraud in October in what District Decide Stanley Chan described as a “deliberate, organised and years-long” scheme.
Prosecutors mentioned that a consultancy agency Lai operated for his private use had taken up workplace area that Apple Day by day had rented for the needs of publication and printing. This was in breach of the phrases of the lease Apple Day by day signed with a authorities firm and amounted to fraud, prosecutors mentioned.
Handing down his sentence, Decide Chan mentioned the sentence was in response to a “easy case of fraud”, which dated again to the Nineteen Nineties when the lease first got here into impact.
Co-defendant Wong, 61, was jailed for 21 months with the decide evaluating him with “the getaway driver for a theft”.
The decide criticised Apple Day by day for abusing its status as a widely known media firm as a “protecting protect”, which he claimed discouraged the owner from taking motion towards the breach of lease phrases.
He additionally mentioned the case had nothing to do with politics or press freedom in Hong Kong.
“Don’t draw any connection to politics,” Chan mentioned.
Defence attorneys beforehand argued the case ought to have been a civil go well with as a substitute of a prison prosecution, including that the sq. footage concerned was minimal.
Lai’s authorized workforce earlier requested the United Nations to analyze his imprisonment and a number of prison costs as “authorized harassment” to punish him for talking out.
One in every of Hong Kong’s best-known pro-democracy activists, Lai has lengthy been overtly loathed by Beijing.
For years, Apple Day by day was scathing in its criticism of China’s Communist Celebration and overtly supportive of democracy.
However the publication collapsed final 12 months after its funds had been frozen and lots of of its senior workers had been charged alongside Lai underneath the sweeping nationwide safety legislation Beijing imposed on Hong Kong – primarily over their marketing campaign for worldwide sanctions towards China.
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