Hong Kong billionaire Jimmy Lai was targeted as part of an email hacking scheme that sought to steal confidential donation data.

Lai, who controls Next Media Ltd, reportedly had highly sensitive information in his emails, including his campaign donations to lawmakers.

This latest incident appears to be related to a series of other events stoking political tensions in Hong Kong. The South China Morning Post reported Lai spent some US$450,000 to support opposition organizations and political candidates.

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Bloomberg News said Lai was blindsided by the aggressive hacking scheme that was able to steal sensitive information.

Lai's company was also targeted by hackers in June. The hackers were able to shut down the company's website for a period of time.

Reports have surfaced that the hackers used the same method to break into the company website and into Lai's email.

Mark Simon, spokesman for the Hong-Kong based company, suggested these two attacks had a lot of similarities and showed the "same effort and complexity".

Highly sensitive campaign donation information was stored in his emails. It's not clear what the hackers will do with the information and the suspects have not yet been captured by the authorities.

Although the campaign donation information has yet to surface, there have been other hacking incidents that suggest hackers are interested in disclosing a substantial amount of confidential information regarding Lai's political affiliations and contributions.

Several weeks ago, another hack led to the public disclosure that Lai is an active supporter of opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong.

The emails leaked to a newspaper led to a series of government hearings to determine if the politicians involved broke the law. Full disclosure of campaign contributions is required by law.