Shock ruling comes weeks after the media mogul was convicted and jailed for 20 years on nationwide safety expenses.
Printed On 26 Feb 2026
A Hong Kong appellate courtroom has overturned a fraud conviction towards pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai in a shock ruling weeks after his jailing for 20 years on a separate nationwide safety cost.
The ruling by the Courtroom of First Occasion on Thursday stated that it allowed the enchantment from Lai and one other defendant within the case to proceed as a decrease courtroom decide had “erred”.
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“[We] permit the appeals, quash the convictions and put aside the sentences,” the judges wrote.
The conviction that was overturned was from an earlier fraud case by which prosecutors alleged {that a} consultancy agency operated by Lai, 78, for his private use had taken up workplace area that his now defunct media enterprise – Apple Every day – rented for publication and printing functions.
This was in breach of the phrases of the lease Apple Every day signed with a authorities firm and amounted to fraud, prosecutors stated.
Lai had been sentenced to 5 years and 9 months in jail in 2022 on the 2 fraud expenses.
Former Apple Every day government Wong Wai-keung was additionally charged in the identical case and jailed for 21 months.
Judges on the Courtroom of Attraction wrote of their judgement that whereas Apple Every day Printing had breached the lease phrases by permitting the agency to make use of a part of the area, it didn’t owe an obligation to reveal its breach. They stated even when it had owed and breached that obligation, the identical couldn’t be attributed to Lai and Wong as a matter of legislation.
The trial judges’ “reasoning in concluding that the candidates had been chargeable for the concealment because the prosecution contended is unsupportable”, they stated.
Neither defendant appeared in courtroom.
The ruling would barely cut back Lai’s whole jail time. The judges dealing with Lai’s nationwide safety case allowed the 2 sentences to be served concurrently for less than two years, with the opposite 18 years to be added after the fraud sentence.
The prolonged sentence – over two counts of conspiracy to collude with international forces and one for publishing seditious supplies – has raised issues that he might spend the remainder of his life in jail.
Lai’s youngsters have expressed hopes {that a} go to by United States President Donald Trump to Beijing might assist safe the discharge of their father, a British citizen. The White Home has confirmed that Trump will journey to China on March 31 by April 2 to fulfill Chinese language chief Xi Jinping.
United Kingdom Overseas Secretary Yvette Cooper has stated Lai was sentenced for exercising his proper to freedom of expression and known as on the Hong Kong authorities to launch him on humanitarian grounds.
Chinese language and Hong Kong authorities have defended Lai’s sentencing within the nationwide safety case, saying it mirrored the spirit of the rule of legislation. Additionally they insisted the safety legislation is critical for the town’s stability.
In a separate ruling on Thursday, a Hong Kong courtroom sentenced the daddy of a wished pro-democracy activist to eight months in jail below the town’s nationwide safety legislation for trying to withdraw funds belonging to an “absconder”.
Kwok Yin-sang, 69, was discovered responsible on February 11 for “trying to cope with, instantly or not directly, any funds or different monetary property or financial assets” after he tried to terminate his daughter Anna Kwok’s insurance coverage coverage and withdraw the funds.
He’s the primary individual within the metropolis to be charged and convicted of the offence.
He had pleaded not responsible and didn’t testify on the trial.
