Hong Kong’s Apple Daily to Decide Monday on Shutting Down Paper

(Bloomberg) -- The board of Next Digital Ltd., which publishes Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, will meet on Monday to decide whether to shut down the pro-democracy newspaper, according to a top adviser to owner Jimmy Lai, after police arrested top editors and froze its bank accounts.

Hong Kong national security officials are blocking the newspaper’s bank accounts, and it may need to close its print and digital operations unless authorities allow access to the funds, said Mark Simon, a top adviser to Lai. Companies that regularly do business with the newspaper tried to deposit money in its accounts on Friday but were prevented from doing so, he said.

Apple Daily Is Running Low on Funds to Print Hong Kong Newspaper

Apple Daily reported over the weekend that the board of Next Digital plans to ask the city’s Security Bureau on Monday for the release of some frozen assets so it can pay the wages of its employees by the end of the month.

Senior managers on some teams in Apple Daily’s newsroom have called in reporters and editors, including those who are on leave, to attend an urgent meeting on Monday at 4 p.m. local time, according to three reporters and editors who declined to be identified. Some teams have already told part-time staff, including interns, that there’s no need to show up at the office or keep working for the paper, according to these people.

Some staffers were already planning to leave for other jobs after the raid on Thursday, according to three reporters who asked not to be identified. They are also worried that companies or media outlets won’t hire anyone who worked at the paper.

The paper, which cheered on Hong Kong’s unprecedented pro-democracy protests in 2019, has been under increasing pressure since China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong last year. Lai, a media tycoon and well-known democracy advocate, is currently in jail for attending unauthorized protests. The city’s Security Bureau had earlier frozen some of Lai’s assets and sent letters to some of his bankers, threatening them with years in jail if they deal with any of his accounts in Hong Kong.

On Thursday, Hong Kong police arrested five senior staff at the media organization and froze HK$18 million ($2.3 million) in company assets. Around 500 police officers descended on Apple Daily’s headquarters that day, searching the company’s offices, barring journalists from their desks and eventually carting away nearly 40 computers belonging to editorial staff.

A Hong Kong court on Saturday denied bail to Editor-in-Chief Ryan Law, and Cheung Kim-hung, the newspaper’s publisher and chief executive officer of Next Digital. The others arrested included Chief Operating Officer Royston Chow and Apple Daily deputy editors, Chan Pui-man and Cheung Chi-wai.

The arrest of the popular tabloid’s top editors and its potential shutdown has alarmed foreign governments and press freedom advocates. The U.S. called for the immediate release of the detained editors, while Human Rights Watch said the arrests amounted to “a new low in a bottomless assault on press freedom.”

In a statement, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, said it was “concerned that this latest action will serve to intimidate independent media in Hong Kong and will cast a chill over the free press,” which is guaranteed under the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

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