Anticorruption officers in Hong Kong yesterday raided the home of Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a media magnate and outspoken critic of Beijing who has supported pro-democracy activists through his publications and with donations.
Hong Kong has been deeply polarized and hit by protests over how its next leader is to be chosen in 2017 — by universal suffrage, as pro-democracy campaigners want, or from a list of pro-Beijing candidates.
The raid on Lai’s home in an affluent avenue in Kowloon District came after media reports on Wednesday said China had decided to limit nominations for the 2017 election to a handful of candidates loyal to Beijing, which will likely escalate protests by pro-democracy activists.
Photo: Taipei Times
“The timing is not uncoincidental with [this week’s move] in our opinion. If you wanted to cool things down, this is the last thing you would do,” Lai’s top aide and spokesman Mark Simon said.
China’s National People’s Congress is expected to announce its decision on Hong Kong’s future on Sunday.
Simon said five anti-graft officials had also searched his home.
The territory’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said later in a statement it had searched three residences and the office of a lawmaker as part of a bribery investigation.
It said it also served a “statutory notice” to the secretary-general of a political party. It did not identify the people or the party, and said no arrests had been made.
Lai owns Hong Kong-based media company Next Media Ltd (壹傳媒), which publishes Next Magazine and the Apple Daily newspaper.
Lai spoke briefly to reporters outside his home after the raid, confirming that ICAC officials had left, but he declined to elaborate.
Trade in Next Media Ltd was halted after the stock fell as much as 6 percent.
This month, e-mails leaked to Hong Kong newspapers gave details of payments that Lai made to the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement.
The group has threatened to shut down Hong Kong’s financial district with protests if Beijing does not allow the 2017 election to be fully democratic. It is not illegal in Hong Kong to receive political donations.
The Apple Daily reported that anti-graft officers had also visited the home of Labour Party lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人) yesterday and removed bank documents. Lee was among activists arrested on July 2 at a protest billed as a rehearsal for the Occupy Central movement.
A copy of a search warrant seen by Reuters gave permission for the ICAC to look for items including bank and electronic records related to payments or donations made by Lai to Labour Party officials, including Lee.
This year, Next Media said HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered had pulled millions of dollars worth of advertisements from Apple Daily after they were pressured by Beijing.
HSBC and Standard Chartered said the decision to pull the advertising was for commercial reasons.
In July last year, Apple Daily said tens of thousands of copies of two editions of the newspaper had been torched by masked men at distribution points.
Lai’s home was also rammed by a car and the assailants left a machete, an axe and a threatening message in the driveway, it said.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS