(ANSA) – HONG KONG, DECEMBER 10 – Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai has been re-sentenced to five years and nine months in prison after being found guilty of fraud in a contract dispute.
Lai, the 75-year-old founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily, recently served a 20-month prison sentence after multiple convictions for participating in unauthorized protests and assemblies. He also faces a life sentence in his upcoming trial on national security charges.
While previous convictions related to his role in the pro-democracy protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019, the latest case involves one of his companies allegedly breaching the terms of his newspaper office lease. In addition to the prison sentence, Lai was fined two million Hong Kong dollars (about €243,000) and banned from running companies for eight years.
Co-defendant Wong, 61, was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
The judge said the verdict related to a “simple case of forgery” and that it had “no relation to politics or freedom of the press”. (Dealing).
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