Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul, was sentenced to more than five years in prison on Saturday for fraud, a punishment that human rights activists denounced as the latest blow to freedom of expression in the city.

Lai, 75, was sentenced on Saturday by Stanley Chan, a judge at the district court, on two counts of fraud for violating the terms of a lease contract related to Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper he founded and which was forced to close last year when the authorities cracked down on it. Wong Wai-keung, director of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital, was sentenced to 21 months for the same offence.

Lai’s sentence of five years, and nine months — which human rights activists called disproportionately harsh for what amounted to a contractual dispute — was a further sign of the dwindling space for dissent and free expression in Hong Kong.

Lai still faces several additional charges, including one under a broad national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing that has cast a pall of fear over the city and resulted in jail terms for several prominent pro-democracy activists.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Dennis Kwok, a former pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, who questioned the framing of the case as fraud, as opposed to a civil dispute. “This is clearly a political prosecution.”

Lai is one of the most prominent pro-democracy figures to be targeted by Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong after it was rocked by a wave of anti-government protests in 2019 and 2020. The authorities have detained opposition figures, forced news outlets to close and arrested and jailed protesters and activists.

Lai was charged in late 2020 for renting offices of Next Digital’s headquarters to his own consultancy firm, Dico Consultants, in violation of the leasing contract. (The lease designated the use of the building for news purposes only.) Activists and experts said the case appeared to involve a minor offence that would normally not result in prison time. Lai’s consultancy firm occupied just 0.16 per cent of the entire office complex.

But Judge Chan, during the sentencing, called the tiny percentage immaterial to the gravity of the case. He pointed to the intangible benefits of the arrangement, as well as the need for a deterrent, as justifications for a heavy sentence.

New York Times News Service