Jimmy Lai funded global campaign that calls for foreign backing ahead of G20, court heard

Two companies owned by Next Digital founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying helped activist Andy Li Yu-hin to make advanced payments of HK$1.56 million to the global advertisement campaign in June 2019 calling for international attention to Hong Kong’s anti-Extradition Law protest, the court heard on Wednesday.

This came as Li, an activist among 12 Hong Kong fugitives arrested by mainland Chinese authorities in 2020, took to the witness stand for the first day as an accomplice witness after confirming his guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.

Li told the court he acquainted with a man named T through the social networking app Telegram in June 2019, which he later came to know as paralegal Wayland Chan Tsz-wah. Chan previously pleaded guilty to the same charge as Li.

Li said both he and Chan were involved in discussions in a Telegram group about running frontpage newspaper advertisements globally ahead of the 2019 G20 summit in Japan to “raise international awareness” of that year’s protests in Hong Kong.

Li said a crowdfunding campaign was created which sourced around HK$7 million, but “money issues” arose after he was unable to utilize the raised funds due to transaction problems from the crowdfunding platform.

After using up all his HK$3 million savings, Li recalled that Chan offered to help make advance payments to some media outlets. He learned at a later stage some of the payments were settled by Lais Hotel Properties Limited and another firm named Dico Consultants Limited, both of which were allegedly controlled by Lai.

The prosecution presented in court a balance sheet retrieved from Li’s home, which showed that the crowdfunding campaign had sourced HK$6.73 million. It also showed that HK$5.96 million was used to pay for newspaper advertisements and another HK$60,000 for online advertisements.

Li acknowledged in court that he had made payments to 17 media outlets across 13 countries over the global advertisement campaign.

The hearing is still underway.