January 5, 2024
HONG KONG – Former Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai Chee-ying spent nearly HK$100 million ($12.8 million) on local activists’ campaigns from 2013 to 2020, with the money going to anti-China groups, prosecutors said on Thursday, the sixth day of Lai’s national security trial.
The prosecution concluded its opening statement in the case, and the trial was adjourned until Monday.
The court was told that beginning in 2013, Lai transferred over HK$118 million in 86 transactions to his personal assistant, Mark Simon, who was also a former senior executive of Next Digital and Apple Daily.
Through Simon, HK$93 million went to the city’s opposition groups and activists. In addition, HK$5 million was loaned to an international campaign that bought advertising on media outlets to solicit foreign forces to pressure the Chinese authority and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, prosecutors said.
The prosecutors called Lai “a mastermind and financial supporter at the highest level of command” of the international propaganda campaign that sought foreign sanctions on the Chinese government and officials
The prosecutors called Lai “a mastermind and financial supporter at the highest level of command” of the international propaganda campaign that sought foreign sanctions on the Chinese government and officials.
The court also heard that three propaganda campaigns were on the media in the US, Canada, the UK, Taiwan, and Europe via one of the campaign organizers, Andy Li Yu-hin.
Li has pleaded guilty to conspiring to collude with foreign forces to endanger national safety in a separate trial and is awaiting sentencing.
Lai was also accused of calling for sanctions on the central government and the HKSAR after the implementation of the National Security Law for Hong Kong in 2020, and of directing Apple Daily to publish seditious articles after his arrest in 2020, according to prosecutors.
In August 2019, Lai donated about $25,000 to Hong Kong Watch, a London-based organization that received an official warning from the Hong Kong Police Force’s National Security Department for publishing content that may violate the National Security Law for Hong Kong.
The prosecution also said in court that the number of prosecution witnesses will be reduced from over 60 to 31, and the number is expected to be further cut.
The trial of Lai, which began on Dec 18, is expected to last about 80 days.
The former media tycoon faces four charges in this trial.
At the prosecution’s request, a collusion charge against Lai has been left on court file. The court will deal with the three charges that Lai denied on Tuesday.
Two of the charges — conspiracy to print, publish, sell, offer for sale, distribute, display or reproduce seditious publications, and conspiracy to collude with external forces to endanger national security — were brought against him and three Apple Daily-related companies.
Lai also faces one count of conspiracy to collude with external forces to endanger national security.