Ming Pao employees outside Ming Pao headquarters in Hong Kong. Photo: Getty Images

Hong Kong:  A senior editor at one of Hong Kong's most prestigious newspapers was fired after the publication of a front page devoted to a single story: the offshore holdings uncovered by the Panama Papers of some of the city's tycoons, celebrities and politicians.

The Chinese-language paper, Ming Pao, said in a statement with no mention of the editor by name that it was cutting staff because of a "difficult business environment".

A Ming Pao staff member puts a sign up on a wall outside of Ming Pao headquarters in Hong Kong. Photo: Anthony Kwan

But employees reacted angrily, and many in Hong Kong joined them in drawing a link between the publication of the Panama Papers story and the dismissal of Keung Kwok-yuen, the No. 2 editor in the newsroom.

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Ming Pao is one of a number of newspapers around the world that have worked with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which this month began releasing a trove of millions of documents linking some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people to secretive offshore companies.

The paper's employees, represented by the Ming Pao Staff Association, confronted the chief editor, Chong Tien Siong, in a tense meeting on Wednesday afternoon, asking for a more thorough explanation of why Keung lost his job, said Phyllis Tsang, the chairwoman of the association and a participant in the meeting.

A supporter writes a slogan on a banner outside Ming Pao headquarters. Photo: Getty Images

Keung's firing also set off a round of condemnations from political leaders in Hong Kong. Many say the city's press freedoms are being steadily eroded by what they see as the growing influence of mainland China. Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy over its affairs as part of an agreement that led to its return to Chinese control in 1997 after more than a century and a half under British rule.

"Cost-cutting is unacceptable as a reason for dismissing Mr Keung," Alan Leong, the leader of the pro-democracy Civic Party, told reporters. "It shows how media owners and editors do not even bother to come up with better excuses anymore - no one would believe such an excuse."

The dismissal was especially sensitive because Chong's predecessor as chief editor, Kevin Lau Chun-to, was removed from the post in January 2014. That led to protests by journalists expressing fear that the Chinese Communist Party was encroaching on one of the city's most venerable and independent-minded newspapers.

Ming Pao employees affix signs saying "Unclear" in Chinese to a wall during a protest outside Ming Pao headquarters in Hong Kong. Photo: Getty Images

Lau's removal - he has continued to work for Ming Pao's parent company - coincided with Ming Pao's cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on a previous leak of offshore documents.

In February 2014, Lau was attacked on a Hong Kong street and left with severe cuts on his back and legs after being hacked by a cleaver. Last year, two men who said they had been offered 100,000 Hong Kong dollars  (more than $16,500) to assault him were sentenced to 19 years in prison. The men were arrested in mainland China and sent to Hong Kong to be prosecuted. Who may have hired the men, or why, has never been disclosed.

Chong, a Malaysian, was expected by many journalists and political observers to toe an editorial line closer to Beijing. But Ming Pao continued to publish stories that gave a voice to people at the fringes of Hong Kong society and to question those in power. The paper won awards for its coverage of the pro-democracy street protests that swept Hong Kong in late 2014.

Yuen Chan, a senior lecturer in journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, pointed to Keung as one of the reasons Ming Pao was able to maintain a large degree of editorial independence.

"A lot of people inside the newspaper do credit Keung Kwok-yuen with that," said Chan. "They credit him as the person who would take the pressure and show the leadership so the reporters and editors who worked under him could go ahead and do their work."

Chan and the Ming Pao employees' association did not assert that Keung's firing was because of the publication of the Panama Papers story. "Nobody has been able to give one smoking-gun reason," she said.

The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's leading English-language daily, also published an article on Wednesday about the offshore holdings of noted residents that were revealed in the recent leak and had been obtained from a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

The law firm's Hong Kong office, in an upscale shopping district, is its busiest. One internationally known figure from the city tied to offshore holdings and featured in the Ming Pao report was movie star and martial artist Jackie Chan.

Other prominent Hong Kong figures named by both newspapers include Li Ka-shing, a property magnate who is Hong Kong's richest person, and Henry Tang, the former chief secretary for Hong Kong, the No. 2 post in the city government.

New York Times