Cheung Kim-hung, former CEO of the now-shuttered Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital Limited, is serving a prison sentence of six years and nine months for conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.
He was sentenced on February 9, 2026, after pleading guilty in November 2022 in return for clemency on another charge.
Cheung was one of six Apple Daily editors and executives sentenced alongside the newspaper’s founder and publisher, Jimmy Lai, who was jailed for 20 years, in Hong Kong’s largest ever media trial.
Apple Daily was published from 1995 until it was forced to close in 2021. When police arrested Cheung, Lai, and the other executives they cited dozens of articles published by Apple Daily, mostly commentary and opinion pieces calling for foreign sanctions, as evidence.
Cheung was arrested on June 16, 2021, and has been behind bars ever since.
Between February and March 2024, Cheung testified against his former boss Lai at the latter’s national security trial.
The arrests of Cheung, Lai, and the other executives came amid authorities’ crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement, which targeted many media figures and activists critical of the government and the Chinese Communist Party.
In response to a request for comment, Hong Kong’s Security Bureau referred CPJ to a statement that quoted the city’s leader, John Lee, saying the court has already handed down “severe sentences” for the defendants in accordance with the law, “manifesting that the rule of law is upheld and justice is done.”