Hong Kong police’s national security unit raids private office of media mogul Jimmy Lai over fraud case
- Plain-clothes officers arrived at the office in Millennium City at about 10.30am and seized boxes of documents during hour-long raid
- Lai was not on the premises at the time, and no one was arrested
Hong Kong police’s national security unit on Thursday raided the private office of media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying in Kwun Tong and seized documents in connection with an ongoing probe into a fraud case against him.
A team of plain-clothes officers, carrying a search warrant, arrived at the office in Millennium City in Kwun Tong at about 10.30am. They seized boxes of documents during an hour-long raid.
Lai, who was due to appear in court on Thursday afternoon alongside 25 opposition figures for charges over their roles in the banned June 4 vigil to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, was not in the office at the time of the raid. No one was arrested in the operation.
“The raid is linked to our ongoing investigation into a fraud case in which Lai was arrested earlier this year,” a law enforcement source said.
Police didn’t even wait for the lawyers to come before they took everything away, so that’s not the rule of law
Lai said he believed officers were trying to find fault with him, adding he was unsure what documents had been seized.