Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai warned he could face 10-year management ban after fraud convictions over use of Apple Daily office for consultancy firm
- Judge tells Lai, 74, that ban on direction and management of businesses could be in addition to jail time
- Lai’s counsel tells court at mitigation hearing that Dico Consultants set up at Apple Daily headquarters for ‘convenience’ and that no deliberate plan was involved
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying could face a 10-year ban on the direction and management of companies after his conviction for fraud over improper use of office space at his now-closed Apple Daily newspaper, a judge warned on Thursday.
Judge Stanley Chan Kwong-chi was speaking after pleas in mitigation for Lai and Wong Wai-keung, a former senior executive of the paper’s parent company Next Digital, were heard in the District Court.
He said that the publishing mogul could face the ban in addition to a jail sentence and confiscation of any illegal proceeds.
Lai, 74, was convicted last month of two charges of fraud after he was found to have covered up the operation of Dico Consultants, also controlled by him, from the newspaper’s headquarters in Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate for more than two decades.
Dico’s operations were ruled to have breached the paper’s lease terms because the landlord, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, prohibited the use of the offices for anything other than publication and related services.
