HONG KONG — Officers from the anticorruption agency in Hong Kong visited the home of the media tycoon Jimmy Lai on Thursday morning, a month after leaked documents suggested that he had made substantial donations to local pro-democracy parties and politicians.
It was unclear whether officers had searched the home of Mr. Lai, an outspoken supporter of the democracy movement in Hong Kong whose newspaper Apple Daily is frequently critical of the Chinese government. The development comes as the city awaits an announcement from Beijing on the process for electing its next leader in 2017, an issue at the heart of an intensifying political tussle that has divided local democracy advocates and Beijing loyalists.
It was not known whether the visit to Mr. Lai’s home had to do with any of his reported donations. Hong Kong has no laws specifically requiring the disclosure of donations to political parties, but some legislators reported to have received donations from Mr. Lai did not declare them as the legislature’s rules require.
Mr. Lai declined to comment, and a spokesman for the antigraft agency, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, said he would not discuss individual cases.
Lee Cheuk-yan, a legislator who was reported to have received money from Mr. Lai, said officers from the anticorruption agency also searched his apartment on Thursday morning. He said it was about Mr. Lai’s donation and about remarks that Mr. Lee had made during a legislative session in January, in which he mentioned recent vandalism of copies of Apple Daily.
Trading in shares of Mr. Lai’s media group, Next Media, on Hong Kong’s stock exchange was halted Thursday morning, after their price fell 3 percent following the news of the raid.
A person who identified himself as a shareholder of Next Media sent the trove of leaked documents to Hong Kong newspapers last month, including images of banking receipts. They indicated that several pro-democracy groups and individuals received more than $1.3 million in donations last year through a Next Media executive, Mark Simon. Lawmakers from a pro-Beijing party later filed reports to the legislature and the anticorruption agency calling for formal investigations into the matter.
In June, The New York Timesreported that HSBC and Standard Chartered ended longtime advertising relationships with Apple Daily late last year at the request of the Chinese government, raising worries that Beijing was increasingly using its influence to stifle opposing voices in Hong Kong.