Benny Tai Jailed For Illegal Poll Spending

The co-founder of the Occupy movement Benny Tai was on Tuesday sentenced to 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to illegally promoting his strategic voting scheme for the 2016 Legco polls in newspapers.

He illegally incurred HK$253,000 in election expenses by placing six newspaper ads to promote the "ThunderGo" plan, which was aimed at helping the pro-democracy camp win a majority in the legislature.

The court heard that the spending was illegal as Tai was neither a candidate nor a candidate’s election expense agent.

Taking 18 months as the starting point for Tai's punishment, District Court judge Anthony Kwok said he had deducted a third because of the former University of Hong Kong law professor's guilty plea, and another two months because of the delayed prosecution.

Tai has been in custody since March last year after he and 46 others were charged with conspiracy to commit subversion under the national security law in connection with unofficial legislative primary polls held in July 2020.