HONG KONG — A Hong Kong appeals court overturned Jimmy Lai’s 2022 fraud conviction and sentencing Thursday in a rare legal victory for the pro-democracy activist.
Lai, 78, a media tycoon and longtime critic of China’s ruling Communist Party, remains in prison under a 20-year sentence he received this month in a separate national security case.
Though the national security case was the biggest one against Lai, he has faced multiple prosecutions that critics say are part of a broader effort to stamp out dissent in the Chinese territory, a former British colony, after mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Lai, a British citizen, had been serving five years and nine months in jail after he was found guilty in October 2022 of violating the lease for Apple Daily, his now-defunct pro-democracy tabloid, by concealing the fact that he was operating a consulting firm on the premises.
Co-defendant Wong Wai-keung, a former senior executive at Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital, was also convicted and was sentenced to 21 months in prison. Both had pleaded not guilty.
“Upon their applications, the Court of Appeal gave them leave to appeal against conviction, allowed their appeals, quashed the convictions and set aside the sentences,” Judges Jeremy Poon, Anthea Pang and Derek Pang wrote in a media summary of their ruling.
The judges said prosecutors had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendants had made false representations. It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors would appeal the ruling.
In the national security case, Lai was found guilty in December of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces under the national security law, which Beijing imposed in 2020, saying it was necessary to restore stability after the protests. He was also found guilty of one count of publishing seditious materials under colonial-era legislation.
The three judges in that case described Lai as the “mastermind” of a conspiracy to lobby foreign governments to impose sanctions, blockades or other hostile measures against China and Hong Kong.
Lai was also previously sentenced to prison over his role in unauthorized assemblies during the 2019 protests, as well as an unauthorized vigil in 2020 for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The U.S. and other Western governments have criticized the prosecutions of Lai as politically motivated, and President Donald Trump has previously vowed to secure his release. The issue could come up when Trump meets with President Xi Jinping in China during a three-day trip the White House says will start March 31.
Lai’s family has expressed concern about his health and said the 20-year sentence could mean he dies in prison. His daughter Claire Lai was House Speaker Mike Johnson’s guest at Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday.
“Jimmy Lai has devoted his career to championing democracy in Hong Kong, steadfastly fighting for the freedoms we too often take for granted in America,” Johnson said in a statement. “Today, however, he sits in a Chinese prison cell for simply defending free speech and speaking out against the totalitarian repression of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Hong Kong government says that Lai received a fair trial and that he has received appropriate medical care in custody.
In a separate case on Thursday, a Hong Kong court sentenced Kwok Yin-sang, 69, the father of a U.S.-based activist, to eight months in prison for trying to withdraw money from his daughter’s insurance policy.
It is the first case against a relative of a pro-democracy activist wanted by Hong Kong police, who have offered bounties of up to 1 million Hong Kong dollars (about $128,000) for 34 overseas activists under the city’s version of the national security law, which bars anyone from handling funds for them.
After Kwok’s conviction earlier this month, Anna Kwok, who is the executive director of the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, said her father was innocent.
“Weaponizing my love for my family will not limit my love for Hong Kong,” she said in a statement released by the HKDC. “The Hong Kong government’s retaliation does not and will not discourage me from my ongoing advocacy and activism.”
