Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai jailed for 5 years and 9 months, fined HK$2 million in fraud case over ‘deliberate concealment’ of consultancy firm at Apple Daily offices
- District Court sentences Jimmy Lai, 75, after tycoon was earlier found guilty of two counts of fraud
- Wong Wai-keung, 61, a former senior executive at Next Digital, also jailed for 21 months
The District Court on Saturday ordered Lai, 75, to pay the fine in three months and banned him from managing companies for eight years. Prosecutors are also seeking the confiscation of the publishing mogul’s illegal gains.
Wong Wai-keung, 61, a chief administrative officer at the paper’s parent company Next Digital, was jailed for 21 months.
Judge Stanley Chan Kwong-chi said Lai had played a significant role in deceiving the publication’s landowner under the cover of a “fairly sizeable and reputable” news outlet.
“If a media organisation, representing the so-called fourth power, allowed a firm to occupy its space without authorisation to carry out its businesses, was it not that such organisation did so under the aegis of its reputation as the media?” said Chan, an arbiter approved by the city’s leader to oversee national security proceedings.
