(Hong Kong) Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was sentenced again on Saturday to five years and nine months in prison for fraud.
Founder of the Apple Daily, a newspaper critical of Chinese power which was forced to close, Mr. Lai had recently spent twenty months behind bars for his participation in demonstrations and unauthorized gatherings.
Aged 75, he is still to be tried soon for “collusion with foreign forces”, a violation of the drastic national security law imposed by Beijing which is punishable by life imprisonment.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted a “grossly unjust” condemnation and called “once again Beijing to respect freedom of expression, including of the press, in Hong Kong”.
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 Apple Daily executive, were convicted of fraud in October in what Judge Stanley Chan described as a “planned, organized and years-long scheme”.
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.
The judge criticized the Apple Daily for having abused its reputation as a well-known media to make it a “protective shield”, which prevented the owner from acting in the event of violation of the conditions of the lease.
But “don’t make any connection with politics”, he added, insisting the case had nothing to do with politics or press freedom.
Jimmy Lai, one of the leading figures of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, has long been openly critical of 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.