AKIPRESS.COM - Hong Kong police have frozen HK$70m ($10m) from a major fund to help pro-democracy protesters, and arrested its four members, accusing them of money laundering, The Guardian reports.

Police said their investigation focused on Spark Alliance, a non-profit online platform formed in 2016 that collects donations to provide support to political critics of the city’s pro-Beijing authorities.

It is one of two crowd-sourced funding platforms that have collected millions of dollars to provide legal and other help for people arrested in pro-democracy protests that have upended the city since early June.

In a statement on its Facebook page, Spark Alliance described the police allegations as “smears”. The fund said the four arrested had legal representation and that it would not comment further given pending legal proceedings.