Hong Kong court quashes fraud conviction of ex-media mogul Jimmy

Hong Kong (TIP): A Hong Kong appellate court on Thursday quashed fraud convictions against onetime media magnate Jimmy Lai, a rare victory in the prominent activist’s legal battles. Lai, 78, an outspoken critic of China’s ruling Communist Party who founded the now-defunct Apple Daily, will stay in prison because he was sentenced to 20 years weeks ago after being convicted in another case brought under a China-imposed national security law.
That came more than five years after he was arrested under the law, which was used in a yearslong crackdown on many of Hong Kong’s leading activists. His plight has evoked grief over the city’s loss of press freedom and sparked an international outcry, though the city’s authorities insist his case had nothing to do with media independence. The conviction that was overturned Thursday was from an earlier fraud case in which prosecutors alleged that a consultancy firm controlled by Lai had used office space that his media business rented for publication and printing purposes. Lai was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison in 2022 after being found guilty of two fraud charges. A lower court judge found that Lai and his co-defendant Wong Wai-keung had concealed that the firm was occupying space and had violated the lease agreement.