Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai cannot be held liable for criminal offence over office contract breach, fraud trial told

Rounding up the defence’s arguments at the District Court on Wednesday, lawyers for Lai and a former Next Digital executive said the media company’s violation of land lease terms and the defendants’ failure to disclose the breach were not enough to prove their intention to deceive and conceal.

Instead, counsel submitted that Apple Daily had legitimate reasons to sublease office space to a consultancy firm controlled by Lai to assist in the now-defunct paper’s animation works and accounting matters.

Lai, 74, faces two counts of fraud for allegedly covering up the operations of Dico Consultants Limited at the paper’s Tseung Kwan O headquarters for more than two decades in breach of its land lease conditions. Former chief administrative officer Wong Wai-keung, 60, faces one count of the offence for his alleged role since 2016. They have denied the charges.

Next Digital’s then chief financial officer and chief operating officer Royston Chow Tat-kuen, who was previously a defendant in the case, turned against his former boss and colleague in the witness box after prosecutors dropped the charge against the 64-year-old on condition he help in the pair’s prosecution.

The prosecution is seeking the pair’s conviction based on what they considered the defendants’ “deliberate” concealment from, and false representations to, landlord Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, concerning Dico’s operation status until it was exposed in 2020.

The court heard that terms for Apple Daily’s land lease included a ban on using office space other than “publishing and printing of newspapers and magazines and ancillary services”.