British pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai has been cleared of fraud charges.
He will remain in prison after being sentenced to 20 years under China’s national security law earlier this month.
Lai, 78, a prominent critic of China’s ruling Communist Party, was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison in 2022 after being found guilty of two fraud charges. But a Hong Kong court quashed the fraud conviction on Thursday.
The quashed conviction was from an earlier fraud case in which prosecutors alleged that a consultancy firm controlled by Lai had used office space that his media business rented for publication and printing purposes.
Lai still faces a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious materials.
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Lai, who founded the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was arrested in August 2020 after China imposed a national security law following massive anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
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Lai denied all the charges and said he was a “political prisoner” facing persecution from Beijing.
The lengthy sentence has raised concerns he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
His son, Sebastien, previously told Sky News it was “essentially a life sentence… a death sentence”.
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The latest ruling would slightly reduce Lai’s total prison time.
The judges handling Lai’s national security case allowed the two sentences to be served concurrently for only two years, with the other 18 years to be added after the fraud sentence.
