Pro-democracy Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was sentenced on Saturday to five years and nine months in prison on fraud charges.
Lai, 75, had been found guilty on two fraud charges for violating the lease contract for the headquarters of his now-defunct liberal newspaper, Apple Daily, by letting a consultancy firm that was partly owned by Lai use the paper’s office space.
Lai, considered Hong Kong’s most prominent China critic, was arrested in August 2020 amid a crackdown that followed the city’s pro-democracy protests. He is already serving a 20-month sentence for unauthorized assemblies.
His media company Next Digital published Apply Daily, which was shuttered last year after police raided the newspaper’s offices and arrested its top editors and executives under China’s new national security law.
Judge Stanley Chan said on Saturday when handing down the sentencing that the violations were “organized and planned” and that Lai had used his media organization as “an umbrella of protection.”
Wong Wai-keung, 61, another Next Digital executive, was also sentenced to 21 months in jail on a single fraud charge.
In addition to jail time, Lai was hit with a $257,000 fine and has been barred from being a director at any company for eight years.
Western governments, including the United States, denounced Lai’s sentencing and expressed concern of the deterioration of human rights and fundamental freedoms in China.
“The United States condemns the grossly unjust outcome of Jimmy Lai’s latest trial sentencing,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.
“By any objective measure, this result is neither fair nor just. We once again call on PRC authorities to respect freedom of expression, including for the press, in Hong Kong,” he added.
With Post wires.