The violation was made by a new national security law passed by Beijing last month. Business partner Jimmy Lai Mark Simon said the tycoon was arrested early Monday.
A total of seven men, aged between 39 and 72, were arrested, according to a police statement, on charges including conspiracy with foreign troops to endanger national security, and conspiracy to commit fraud. The statement did not name an individual, but a spokesman told CNN that Lai was among them and that he was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy.
The “police investigation is still ongoing, and we can not rule out the possibility that more people will be arrested,” it added.
Later Monday morning, a livestream uploaded to Facebook by Apple Daily showed police searching the company’s newsroom. A police spokesman confirmed to CNN that the agency was conducting a search to enter Apple Daily’s office.
Under the new security law, which was imposed by Beijing last month, the crime of collaborating with foreign powers carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Lai has strong ties with Washington and has lobbied for the United States to take a tougher line on China. What he has done to have the law in conflict since it was passed is unclear.
The Hong Kong government has defended the law as necessary to protect national security. It has been condemned by human rights groups, the European Union, and the United States as too broad and restrictive of the city’s civil liberties.
Newspaper mogul
A former clothing tycoon, Lai founded Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper in 1995 – two years before Hong Kong was handed over from Britain to Chinese control. Visual model on USA Today, the paper caused a small revolution in the city’s media landscape, sparking a price war and drastically changing how rivals worked as they struggled to stop Lai’s flashy tabloid sensibilities. .
While I concentrate on celebrity mammals and other danger to tabloid, since the handover the paper has emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the local government and Beijing. It has openly supported the pro-democracy movement and anti-government protests, printing on flyers and posters in its pages that people can exterminate and participate in.
This drove the 71-year-old Lai to a place of prominence within the opposition movement, and made him a contempt for pro-Beijing politicians and media in the city.
The People’s Daily – the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party – claimed at a time when Lai was part of a quartet of “secret middlemen and modern traitors”, when Beijing tried to accuse the unrest in Hong Kong of foreign troops.
CNN’s Isaac Yee and Jenni Marsh contributed reporting.
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