Leaked emails show that Jimmy Lai spent between HKD3 million to HKD3.5 million helping Occupy Central hold its unofficial referendum in June, despite making scathing comments in private about the organisers being “idealist scholars” who had “no strategy” and “could accomplish nothing if there was no help”.
Lai is a Hong Kong mogul who owns Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Media, and popular clothing company Giordano. The correspondence also shows that Next Media gave advice and propaganda material to the organisers of Occupy Central.
The leaked emails did not contain any detailed breakdowns on the way the donation was spent, but an exchange between Lai and his aide Mark Simon made mention of “advertisements and billboards”, according to the SCMP. The emails showed that the executive director of Next Media, Ip Yut-kin, told Lai that he should distance both himself and the media group from the Occupy Central campaign, in fear of complications from China, especially given Lai’s already outspoken anti-Beijing stance. Lai’s reply was blunt: “Noted. But I don’t agree.”
Occupy Central is the brainchild of HKU associate law professor Benny Tai, CU associate sociology professor Dr Chan Kin-man, and Baptist Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. Ip apparently attempted to dissuade Lai from helping the trio, by saying they had “no power nor money, and that people would not like them to have a powerful backer such as Lai”.
The Standard claims that Lai clearly doesn’t care about what people think. “People would assume I helped them even if I hadn’t. So it does not matter”. He also stressed that OC needed him, as the organisers had “[no] organised plans or steps for actions” and “couldn’t make the cut without help”. Lai’s comments may not have been completely unfounded: in one email Chu said that it was too early to go into the “technical aspects” and vaguely described a campaign to “materialise the spirits of love and peace”.
Chan dismissed the emails as part of a smear campaign and said that none of the HKD7 million that Occupy Central had received in the last year had come from Lai.
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Photo: Occupy Central founders Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, Dr Benny Tai, and Chan Kin-man (by VOA via Wikimedia)
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