Prosecutors lose appeal on Lai acquittal

The Department of Justice lost an appeal in the high court yesterday over a ruling to clear jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying on a charge of intimidating a local reporter in 2017.

Justice Andrew Chan Hing-wai dismissed the appeal as the department was unable to prove errors of law in two critical elements of the case made by West Kowloon magistrate May Chung Ming-sun in acquiting Lai, 74.

In a written verdict, Chan said he could only review if a lower court made an error of law, including misdirecting herself or misunderstanding facts.

Therefore, he said, the department must prove Chung had made mistakes in both critical elements in the acquittal, which includes Lai's intention to scare the reporter - identified only as X - and that he threatened X with personal injury

On the first, Chan said Chung had mixed up subjective and objective facts, as she believed X was not intimidated by Lai's threat as X could continue filming the tycoon.

But Chan said given that Lai was a businessman with clout, the fact that he had yelled "I will definitely mess you up, I will definitely mess you up" at X twice might have been considered threatening by X, as X did not do anything provocative.

He added that Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, had also taken photos of X.

On the second element, Chan said the words that Lai yelled were ambiguous and did not amount to a "threat to injure."

Lai was acquitted by Chung last September of criminally intimidating Oriental Daily reporter X during the June 4 vigil at Victoria Park in 2017.

The court heard that X was assigned to follow Lai for about three years as part of a "special core group" tracking the media tycoon since 2014.

Lai, 74, is serving a 20-month sentence for four unauthorized assembly cases. He still faces other charges, including some alleging national security law breaches.

That appeal loss came after Apple Daily Printing was taken to district court last week to get it to pay MPF contributions of HK$260,000.

Lai's Next Digital - the parent company of Apple Daily - was ordered to be wound up last week.

The government has frozen HK$18 million of the media company's assets since June 17 as part of a national security investigation.