Hong Kong’s Apple Daily publisher to liquidate company

Jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai’s newspaper was shut in June after a police raid to probe breach of a new national security law.

Hong Kong media group Next Digital Ltd has said that it aims to go into liquidation and its board of directors has resigned to facilitate the process. Next Digital is owned by jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai and was the publisher of Apple Daily, a popular pro-democracy newspaper that closed in June after its newsroom was raided by police officers investigating whether some articles breached a national security law introduced in Hong Kong by Beijing last year. The company’s assets were frozen as part of the national security investigation and its shares have been suspended from trading since June 17.