How do foreign remittances tie into these sedition charges?

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Hong Kong police said the alleged foreign remittances are part of the basis for the sedition-related case against two booksellers.
Police arrested a 33-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man over allegations that they displayed items with “seditious intent” and sold publications with “seditious content” inside their bookstore. In the same case, police also suspected they were receiving remittances from “foreign political organisations”, and officers seized seditious books and documents from both the shop and the suspects’ residence.
Police linked remittances to the same investigation alongside “seditious content”
Police said the pair were suspected of receiving remittances from “foreign political organisations” in addition to the sedition-related allegations. The sedition suspicion covered displaying a biography of jailed media mogul Jimmy Lai, and selling publications described by police as having seditious content. Police said the materials included content “inciting hatred against” the government, the judiciary, and law enforcement agencies.
Seizures from the shop and residence were connected to the sedition allegations
Police stated that officers seized seditious books and documents from the bookstore and from the suspects’ residence. The arrests were tied to the broader national security framework used for detention for investigation, with the sedition-related conduct treated as part of that case. Local media also showed officers removing lyrics from a Cantonese song from the shop window.
The charges included potential prison terms for both “seditious intention” and money laundering
The suspects were detained for investigation under Hong Kong’s national security law passed in 2024. They face up to seven years in prison for acting with “seditious intention” and up to 14 years in prison for money laundering. The remittances allegation was therefore raised alongside a money-laundering exposure in the same enforcement context described by police.
The case was presented as part of a wider national security crackdown
This arrest followed earlier actions against another bookstore, Book Punch, where four employees were arrested in March over alleged sales of seditious publications, including a biography of Jimmy Lai. At the start of June, Hong Kong reported that it had arrested 401 people for various national security crimes and convicted 182. In this pattern of enforcement, police again combined sedition-related publishing allegations with a remittances suspicion in the same case.

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How do foreign remittances tie into these sedition charges?

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