Court orders defunct Apple Daily to pay HK$1.5 million over defamatory articles

A Hong Kong court has ordered the defunct Apple Daily newspaper to pay HK$1.5 million (US$191,200) in damages to a listed company and two senior executives over 10 defamatory articles that accused them of spying on the city’s pro-democracy activists at Beijing’s behest.

In a written judgment delivered on Tuesday, the High Court ruled against former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s flagship publication after the outlet – taken over by liquidators following a government petition in 2021 – presented no evidence to counter the civil claim.

Mr Justice Tony Poon Siu-tung found that the articles exposed China Innovation Investment, its chairman Xiang Xin and his wife, alternate director Kung Ching, to contempt and ridicule.

Poon said the newspaper had failed to prove that the allegations were true or to give the company and its executives an opportunity to respond before the reports were published between November 23 and December 7, 2019.

He ordered Apple Daily Limited and AD Internet Limited, which were the newspaper’s publisher and Internet domain name owner, respectively, to pay HK$400,000 to HK$600,000 in damages to the three plaintiffs, totalling HK$1.5 million.

The articles followed allegations made in November 2019 by self-proclaimed former spy William Wang Liqiang, who claimed that the Communist Party had used China Innovation as a front to interfere in Hong Kong politics by infiltrating political groups, universities and media outlets.