Surprise ruling comes weeks after the media mogul was convicted and jailed for 20 years on national security charges.<\/p>\n
A Hong Kong appellate court has overturned a fraud conviction against pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai in a surprise ruling weeks after his jailing for 20 years on a separate national security charge.<\/p>\n
The ruling by the Court of First Instance on Thursday said that it allowed the appeal from Lai and \u2060another defendant in the case to proceed as a lower court judge had \u201cerred\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We] allow the appeals, quash the convictions and set aside the sentences,\u201d the judges wrote.<\/p>\n
The conviction that was overturned was from an earlier fraud case in which prosecutors alleged that a consultancy firm operated by Lai, 78, for his personal use had taken up office space that his now defunct media business \u2013 Apple Daily \u2013 rented for publication and printing purposes.<\/p>\n
This was in breach of the terms of the lease Apple Daily signed with a government company and amounted to fraud, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Lai had been sentenced to five years and nine months in prison in 2022 on the two fraud charges.<\/p>\n
Former Apple Daily executive Wong Wai-keung was also charged in the same case and jailed for 21 months.<\/p>\n
Judges at the Court of Appeal wrote in their judgement that while Apple Daily Printing had breached the lease terms by allowing the firm to use part of the space, it didn\u2019t owe a duty to disclose its breach. They said even if it had owed and breached that duty, the same could not be attributed to Lai and Wong as a matter of law.<\/p>\n
The trial judges\u2019 \u201creasoning in concluding that the applicants were liable for the concealment as the prosecution contended is unsupportable\u201d, they said.<\/p>\n
Neither defendant appeared in court.<\/p>\n
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The ruling would slightly reduce Lai\u2019s total prison time. The judges handling Lai\u2019s national security case allowed the two sentences to be served concurrently for only two years, with the other 18 years to be added after the fraud sentence.<\/p>\n
The lengthy sentence \u2013 over \u200ctwo counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one for publishing seditious materials \u2013 has raised concerns that he could spend the rest of his life in prison.<\/p>\n
Lai\u2019s children have expressed hopes that a visit by United States President Donald Trump to Beijing could help secure the release of their father, a British citizen. The White House has confirmed that Trump will travel to China on March 31 through April 2 to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n
United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has said Lai was sentenced for exercising his right to freedom of expression and called on the Hong Kong authorities to release him on humanitarian grounds.<\/p>\n
Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have defended Lai\u2019s sentencing in the national security case, saying it reflected the spirit of the rule of law. They also insisted the security law is necessary for the city\u2019s stability.<\/p>\n
In a separate ruling on Thursday, a Hong Kong court sentenced the father of a wanted pro-democracy activist to eight months in prison under the city\u2019s national security law for attempting to withdraw funds belonging to an \u201cabsconder\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kwok Yin-sang, 69, was found guilty on February 11 for \u201cattempting to deal with, directly or indirectly, any funds or other financial assets or economic resources\u201d after he tried to terminate his daughter Anna Kwok\u2019s insurance policy and withdraw the funds.<\/p>\n
He is the first person in the city to be charged and convicted of the offence.<\/p>\n
He had pleaded not guilty and did not testify at the trial.<\/p>\n
Source: RhinoEasy News<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Surprise ruling comes weeks after the media mogul was convicted and jailed for 20 years on national security charges. A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}