Hong Kong's Financial Secretary Paul Chan has presented a petition to the Court of First Instance to wind up Next Digital Ltd (NDL), the media group owned by jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai.

Next Digital was the publisher of Apple Daily, a popular pro-democracy newspaper that closed in June after its newsroom was raided by police investigating whether some articles in published breached a national security law introduced in Hong Kong by Beijing last year.

The government said Chan took the view that it would be in the...