HONG KONG: Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai was denied bail on Thursday on a charge of fraud related to the lease of a building that houses his Apple Daily, an anti-government tabloid.
Authorities have intensified a crackdown on key opposition figures in the Chinese-ruled city since Beijing circumvented the local legislature and imposed sweeping national security legislation on the global financial center on June 30.
While Lai’s fraud charge did not fall under the national security law, it marks the latest crackdown on pro-democracy figures in the former British colony, which was handed back to Beijing in 1997 with a promise to maintain the free-wheeling city’s way of life for 50 years.
Critics say the law crushes freedoms in the global financial center, while supporters say it will bring stability after prolonged anti-China, pro-democracy protests last year.
On Wednesday, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent democracy activists Joshua Wong was jailed for more than 13 months for his role in an unlawful anti-government rally in 2019, the toughest and most high-profile sentencing of an opposition figure this year.
Lai, 73, and two senior executives of his company Next Digital, were charged on Wednesday on suspicion of concealing from and falsely representing the use of their office to their landlord, a public corporation set up by the Hong Kong government.
The charge stated they were not using the office space as permitted under the lease between 2016 to 2020, and had sub-let a part of the premises, resulting in benefits to Apple Daily.
Reuters was not immediately able to reach Lai or his lawyers for comment. Next Digital suspended trading on Thursday morning, pending an announcement containing “inside information.”
“This is about dirtying Jimmy up. It’s Beijing’s policing brought to Hong Kong,” Mark Simon, an associate of Lai, told Reuters.
An ardent critic of Beijing, Lai has been detained since Wednesday after reporting to the police for his arrest in August. Prosecutors applied to adjourn the case until April next year, according to local media.
In August, Lai was arrested after about 200 police officers swooped on his offices. Hong Kong police later said they had arrested nine men and one woman for suspected offenses including “collusion with a foreign country/external elements to endanger national security, conspiracy to defraud” and others.
Suspicion of colluding with foreign forces carries a maximum sentence of life in jail under the new security law.
Lai has been a frequent visitor to Washington, where he has met officials, including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to rally support for Hong Kong democracy, prompting Beijing to label him a “traitor.”
The security law was introduced on June 30 and punishes anything China considers subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai in custody after fraud charge
https://arab.news/8mhgz
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai in custody after fraud charge
- Authorities have intensified a crackdown on key opposition figures in the Chinese-ruled city
- ‘This is about dirtying Jimmy up. It’s Beijing’s policing brought to Hong Kong’
Prince Harry’s war against UK press reaches showdown with Daily Mail case
- Prince Harry to give evidence in London court for second time
- Media accused of phone hacking and other privacy intrusions
LONDON:Prince Harry’s war against the British press heads into a final showdown next week with the start of his
privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the powerful Daily Mail newspaper over alleged unlawful action he says contributed to his departure for the US
The 41-year-old Harry, a boy when his mother Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash with paparazzi in pursuit, has long resented the often aggressive tactics of British media and pledged to bring them to account.
Harry, who is King Charles’ younger son, and six other claimants including singer Elton John are suing Associated Newspapers over years of alleged unlawful behavior, ranging from bugging phone lines to obtaining personal health records.
Associated has rejected any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “preposterous smears” and part of a conspiracy.
Over the course of nine weeks, Harry, John and the other claimants – John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes – will give evidence to the High Court in London and be grilled by Associated’s lawyers.
The prince is due to appear next Thursday. It will be his second such court appearance in the witness box in three years, having become the first British royal to give evidence in 130 years in 2023 in another lawsuit.
Current and former senior Associated staff, including a number of editors of national newspapers, will likewise be quizzed by the claimants’ legal team. The stakes for both sides are high, with not just the reputation of media and claimants on the line, but because legal costs are set to run into tens of millions of pounds. Critics say Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is bitter over unfavorable coverage, from partying in his youth to quarrelling with his family and leaving the UK in later years.
But supporters say it is a noble cause against sometimes immoral media.
“He seems to be motivated by a lot more than money,” said Damian Tambini, an expert in media and communications regulation and policy at the London School of Economics.
“He’s actually trying to, along with many of the other complainants, affect change in the newspapers.”
Harry and his American wife Meghan have cited media harassment as one of the main factors that led them to stepping down from royal duties and moving to California in 2020. Elton John, 77, also has history in the courts with the British press, successfully suing newspapers including the Daily Mail for libel. He received 1 million pounds ($1.34 million) from the Sun in a 1988 settlement over a false allegation about sex sessions with male prostitutes.
Having successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers, and also won damages, an apology and some admission of wrongdoing from Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), the case against Associated could be Harry’s most significant. The 130-year-old Daily Mail, renowned for championing traditional, conservative values, for decades has been one of, if not the most powerful media force within Britain and unlike the Mirror and NGN has not been embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal.
It says it gives voice to millions in “Middle England,” holding the rich, powerful and famous to account.
In 1997, it famously ran a front page denouncing five men accused of the racist killing of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence as murderers and challenging anyone to sue if that was wrong.
The case was a defining moment in race relations in Britain.
Despite that, one of those now suing the Mail is Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered Stephen, who says journalists tapped her phones, monitored her bank accounts and phone bills, and paid police for confidential information.
The Associated case will mark one of the final airings in court of accusations of phone-hacking which have dogged the British press for more than 20 years.
The practice of unlawfully accessing voicemails fully burst onto the public agenda in 2011, leading to the closure of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the jailing of its former editor who had later worked as a communications chief for ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, and a public inquiry.
Murdoch’s NGN and the Mirror Group have since both paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of the unlawful activity.
If the claimants lose, Tambini said, “this could be the moment when phone hacking, finally, as a set of issues, went away.”
