Former media tycoon Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison

Jimmy Lai leaves the Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong in February 2021 Picture: AP

Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media tycoon and a fierce critic of Beijing, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in one of the most prominent cases prosecuted under a China-imposed national security law that has virtually silenced the city’s dissent.

Judge Esther Toh said 18 years of the 78-year-old British national’s sentence should be served consecutively to his jail term in his fraud case, for which he received a jail term of five years and nine months. Lai can appeal his case.