|
Lai, 75, was found guilty of two counts of fraud for covering up
the operations of a private company, Dico Consultants Ltd, at
the headquarters of the now shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, in
what was ruled a breach of its land lease.
Hong Kong's most prominent China critic, Lai has been behind
bars since December 2020 and has served 20 months for
unauthorised assemblies.
He was the head of Next Digital, the parent company of Apple
Daily that shut down in June 2021 after a police raid.
Another Next Digital executive, Wong Wai-keung, 61, was found
guilty of fraud and jailed for 21 months.
District Court Judge Stanley Chan wrote in a judgement that Lai
had "acted under the protective umbrella of a media
organization". Chan said this prosecution of a media tycoon
"wasn't equivalent to an attack on press freedom."
The judge deducted three months from his sentence as Lai had
acknowledged much of the prosecution's case.
Western governments including the United States have expressed
concern about Lai's plight and condemned what they call a
broader deterioration in protection for human rights and
fundamental freedoms under a China-imposed National Security
Law.
"Beijing's elaborate criminal case against Jimmy Lai is a
vendetta against a leading proponent of democracy and media
freedom in Hong Kong," said Maya Wang, an Asia director with the
New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch, which called
for Lai's release.
Prosecutors said that under the newspaper's lease conditions on
a plot of government land in a science park, the property could
only be used for "publishing and printing" without prior
approval from the operator.
Chan issued an order preventing Lai from becoming a director of
any company for eight years and fined him HK$2 million
($260,000).
Lai's lawyer, Derek Chan, had urged the judge to consider Lai's
age and contributions to Hong Kong's media industry.
A separate, landmark national security trial involving Lai is
scheduled to resume on Tuesday. It was delayed while Beijing
decides on the controversial issue of whether foreign lawyers,
including Lai's British barrister Timothy Owen, should be
allowed to work on national security cases.
($1 = 7.7854 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by Jessie Pang and James Pomfret; Editing by William
Mallard)
[© 2022 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
