HONG KONG, June 21 (Bloomberg) - The board of Next Digital Ltd., which publishes Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, will meet on Monday to decide whether to shut down the pro-democracy newspaper, according to a top adviser to owner Jimmy Lai, after police arrested top editors and froze its bank accounts.

Hong Kong national security officials are blocking the newspaper’s bank accounts, and it may need to close its print and digital operations unless authorities allow access to the funds, said Mark Simon, a top adviser to Lai. Companies that regularly do business with the newspaper tried to deposit money in its accounts on Friday but were prevented from doing so, he said.

Apple Daily Is Running Low on Funds to Print Hong Kong Newspaper

On Thursday, Hong Kong police arrested five senior staff at the media organization and froze HK$18 million in company assets. Around 500 police officers descended on Apple Daily’s headquarters that day, searching the company’s offices, barring journalists from their desks and eventually carting away nearly 40 computers belonging to editorial staff.

A Hong Kong court on Saturday denied bail to Editor-in-Chief Ryan Law, and Cheung Kim-hung, the newspaper’s publisher and chief executive officer of Next Digital. The others arrested included Chief Operating Officer Royston Chow and Apple Daily deputy editors, Chan Pui-man and Cheung Chi-wai.

The paper has been under increasing pressure since China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong last year. Lai, a media tycoon and well-known democracy advocate, is currently in jail for attending unauthorized protests. The city’s Security Bureau had earlier frozen some of Lai’s assets and sent letters to some of his bankers, threatening them with years in jail if they deal with any of his accounts in Hong Kong.