Nina Wang's Ex-Feng Shui Adviser, Lover Loses Bid for $12 Billion Estate
Nina Wang’s Ex-Lover Loses Bid for $12 Billion Estate
Timothy O'Rourke/Bloomberg
Nina Wang’s former feng shui adviser and lover Tony Chan lost a bid for her $12 billion estate, with Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal dismissing his attempt to overturn an earlier ruling that the fortune should go to charity.
Nina Wang’s former feng shui adviser and lover Tony Chan lost a bid for her $12 billion estate, with Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal dismissing his attempt to overturn an earlier ruling that the fortune should go to charity. Photographer: Timothy O'Rourke/Bloomberg
Nina Wang’s former feng shui adviser and lover Tony Chan lost a bid for her $12 billion estate, with Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal upholding a ruling that a will in his favor was forged and the property should go to charity.
Chan “has persisted in pursuing a thoroughly dishonest case,” Judge Anthony Rogers said today on behalf of the three- judge panel. “In so doing he has abused the process of the court,” Rogers said.
Chan, 51, who is free on bail after being arrested on suspicion of forgery, will appeal to Hong Kong’s highest court, adding a further chapter to the world’s biggest probate dispute. Chan claimed Wang left him her fortune after a 15-year intimate relationship that began when he was hired to help find her kidnapped husband Teddy, with whom she built the Chinachem Group into one of Hong Kong’s biggest closely held developers.
Chan “will file an appeal to the Court of Final Appeal as soon as possible,” said his spokesman Kenis Liu today.
High Court Judge Johnson Lam’s ruling was tainted because he was morally offended by Chan and Wang’s relationship, Chan’s lawyer Ian Mill, had told the appeal panel. Lam dismissed Chan’s claim and ruled the will was a forgery.
Chan was arrested on suspicion of forgery following Lam’s ruling and freed on HK$5 million ($643,000) bail. Prosecutor Richard Turnbull said today the criminal investigation into Chan’s suspected forgery is continuing.
Charitable Foundation
Wang’s 2002 will, which the appeal judges said was indisputably valid, bequeathed the estate to the foundation that she created with Teddy in 1988. Supervision of the Chinachem Charitable Foundation Ltd. was to be entrusted to a body formed by the Secretary General of the United Nations, the premier of China and the chief executive of Hong Kong, according to the appeal ruling.
The foundation would award Chinese prizes of worldwide signficance, similar to that of the Nobel Prizes, according to the judgment.
“There is justice in the world,” Nina’s brother and a governor of the charity Kung Yan-sum said at a press conference today after the decision.
The battle over the estate, described by its lawyers as the world’s biggest probate dispute, mirrors an earlier fight Wang waged for her husband’s fortune.
Previous Probate Fight
Wang won control of the estate in 2005 after Hong Kong’s highest court ruled she didn’t conspire to forge her husband’s will, overturning rulings by lower courts in 2002 and 2004 that gave the fortune to her father-in-law, Wang Din-shin.
Wang was also arrested during her dispute over the title to the property on charges she forged the will. Police dropped the charges after the Court of Final Appeal’s ruling.
Wang, who died of uterine cancer at the age of 69 in 2007, had no children. She married Teddy in 1955 at the age of 18.
The couple turned a Shanghai paint and chemical business, started by Teddy’s father, into a property developer with a portfolio including the Chinachem twin towers and Chinachem Exchange Square.
Teddy Wang was kidnapped in 1983 and again in 1990. He wasn’t returned after the second abduction even though his wife paid part of the ransom. One of the captured kidnappers said Teddy Wang’s body was dumped into the sea from a small boat.
Nina ran Chinachem using a power of attorney, insisting Teddy was alive. When her father-in-law had Teddy legally declared dead in 1999, she said Teddy had made her his heir in a new will signed just before his kidnapping.
Chan, who is married with three children, was hired by Wang in 1992 to help find her husband by using the Chinese geomantic practice of feng shui, according to Lam’s judgment. Chan dug holes at various sites owned by Chinachem for seven years, and received about HK$2.1 billion from her between 2005 and 2006.
Chan’s lawyers said the payments were to groom him for managing her fortune. Chan testified at last year’s trial that his sexual relationship with Wang began a month after they met.
The case is between Chinachem Charitable Foundation Limited and Chan Chun Chuen and the Secretary for Justice, CACV62/2010 in the Hong Kong High Court of Appeal.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kelvin Wong in Hong Kong at kwong40@bloomberg.net; Debra Mao in Hong Kong at dmao5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Douglas Wong at dwong19@bloomberg.net
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