Unverified leaked emails allege city’s last governor helped media boss before handover
Cheung Chi-fai and Ng Kang-chung 07 October 2014
Aides to the city’s last governor Chris Patten allegedly offered Next Media chairman Jimmy Lai Chee-ying a British passport before the handover.
That’s according to unverified emails leaked to the media yesterday - the third leak relating to Lai since August.
It came as the Tseung Kwan O headquarters of Next Media were besieged yesterday by an angry mob opposing the Occupy Central movement, which the media boss openly backs.
Another email from Occupy supporter Jeff Tsui Siu-wa to activists including Dr Chan Kin-man and former lawmaker Tanya Chan seems to suggest that Lai or his aide Mark Simon may have paid for the movement to advertise in Next Media publications and other newspapers.
Neither Lai nor Simon could be reached for comment.
The previous round of leaks exposed donations from Lai to lawmakers and prompted an ongoing probe by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Lai’s home was raided and he was asked in for questioning.
The British passport offer was revealed in messages sent to the media with links to thousands of emails - purportedly from a disgruntled Next Media investor.
“The passports came from the aides and activists in the Conservative Party who would become Patten’s aides. The call was made in London in the time of John Major,” Simon allegedly wrote in an email to a lawyer dated October 6, 2009.
It is unclear whether he was also referring to passports for Lai’s family, and whether Lai had requested the passports or if the British government took the initiative.
Patten, a former Conservative Party chairman in Britain, succeeded Lord Wilson as governor of Hong Kong in July 1992.
According to the emails, Lai allegedly tried to change his date of birth on his British passport in 2009 after he obtained an extract of his family’s household register, created several years after he was born in Guangzhou in 1947. Lai told the UK Border Agency he was previously unable to obtain the extract from the mainland because of his “pro-democracy views and open criticism of the Chinese Communist Party”.
To support Lai’s request, his aides and lawyers also apparently sought a letter - drafted by them - from Patten. “I know he will do it. I think the main thing is that he considered JL in good stead, and also can attest to the threat Mr Lai faces in China,” Simon wrote in the same October 6, 2009 email.
The emails did not show if Patten provided the letter to Lai.
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Patten aides ‘offered UK passport to Jimmy Lai’
Unverified leaked emails allege city’s last governor helped media boss before handover
Cheung Chi-fai and Ng Kang-chung
07 October 2014
Aides to the city’s last governor Chris Patten allegedly offered Next Media chairman Jimmy Lai Chee-ying a British passport before the handover.
That’s according to unverified emails leaked to the media yesterday - the third leak relating to Lai since August.
It came as the Tseung Kwan O headquarters of Next Media were besieged yesterday by an angry mob opposing the Occupy Central movement, which the media boss openly backs.
Another email from Occupy supporter Jeff Tsui Siu-wa to activists including Dr Chan Kin-man and former lawmaker Tanya Chan seems to suggest that Lai or his aide Mark Simon may have paid for the movement to advertise in Next Media publications and other newspapers.
Neither Lai nor Simon could be reached for comment.
The previous round of leaks exposed donations from Lai to lawmakers and prompted an ongoing probe by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Lai’s home was raided and he was asked in for questioning.
The British passport offer was revealed in messages sent to the media with links to thousands of emails - purportedly from a disgruntled Next Media investor.
“The passports came from the aides and activists in the Conservative Party who would become Patten’s aides. The call was made in London in the time of John Major,” Simon allegedly wrote in an email to a lawyer dated October 6, 2009.
It is unclear whether he was also referring to passports for Lai’s family, and whether Lai had requested the passports or if the British government took the initiative.
Patten, a former Conservative Party chairman in Britain, succeeded Lord Wilson as governor of Hong Kong in July 1992.
According to the emails, Lai allegedly tried to change his date of birth on his British passport in 2009 after he obtained an extract of his family’s household register, created several years after he was born in Guangzhou in 1947. Lai told the UK Border Agency he was previously unable to obtain the extract from the mainland because of his “pro-democracy views and open criticism of the Chinese Communist Party”.
To support Lai’s request, his aides and lawyers also apparently sought a letter - drafted by them - from Patten. “I know he will do it. I think the main thing is that he considered JL in good stead, and also can attest to the threat Mr Lai faces in China,” Simon wrote in the same October 6, 2009 email.
The emails did not show if Patten provided the letter to Lai.
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