Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai was again sentenced on Saturday December 10 to five years and nine months in prison for fraud. Founder of theApple Dailya newspaper critical of Chinese power which was forced to close in 2021, Mr. Lai had recently spent twenty months behind bars for his participation in demonstrations and unauthorized gatherings.
Aged 75, he has yet to be tried for “collusion with foreign forces”a violation of the drastic national security law imposed by Beijing, which is punishable by life imprisonment.
While his previous stints in prison were linked to his role in the pro-democracy protests that rocked the Chinese territory in 2019, the case for which he was sentenced on Saturday concerns the violation of the conditions for renting the offices of his newspaper. Mr. Lai and Wong Wai-keung, a former executive ofApple Dailywere convicted of fraud in October in what Judge Stanley Chan described as a plan “planned, organized and lasted for years”.
‘Make no connection to politics,’ says judge
Prosecutors said a consulting firm run by Mr. Lai for his personal use occupied offices rented by Apple Daily for publishing and printing. This was, they claimed, a violation of rental terms signed with a government company and amounted to fraud. For their part, the defense lawyers had argued that the case should have been the subject of a civil rather than a criminal trial, adding that the area concerned was minimal. Mr. Wong, 61, was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
“Don’t link to politics”, the judge said, insisting that the case had nothing to do with freedom of the press. Jimmy Lai, one of the leading figures of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, has long opposed the authorities in Beijing. For years, his newspaper criticized Chinese power before being forced to close in mid-2021 after its funds were frozen and some of its executives and its founder were arrested.