By Olivia Chung

HONG KONG – Hong Kong’s High Court on Tuesday rejected afeng shui master’s claim for the estimated US$4.2 billion fortune of late property tycoon Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum after a court case featuring a heady mix of sex, secrets and geomancy.

Mr Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon said a 2006 will in the possession of Tony Chan Chun-chuen was a fake, and upheld a 2002 will giving the estate to a charity run by Wang’s family.

Wang, Asia’s richest woman at the time of her death, succumbed to cancer in April of 2007. Her death triggering a battle for her fortune between Chan and the Chinachem Charitable Foundation, which is associated with Chinachem Group, the Hong Kong-based property giant that Wang ran until she died. Chan, 50, a former bartender, was the tycoon’s richly remunerated feng shuiadvisor – and her secret lover.

“I do not find [Chan] to be a credible witness and I find in many respects his evidence was tailored to suit his convenience,” the judge wrote in his ruling on the case, popularly known as the “Battle of the Wills”, that has gripped the city.

Dubbed “Little Sweetie” because of the pigtails and girlish clothes that became her trademark, Wang’s worth at the time of her death was estimated at $4.2 billion by Forbes. Some media reports claimed her fortune, amassed initially by her husband and Chinachem founder Teddy Wang Tei-huei, was as high as $13 billion, while documents released by the court did not put a figure on the size of the estate.

This is not the first courtroom drama involving Wang and her fortune to have captivated Hong Kong. The She fought a bitter battle with her father-in-law to win control of her late husband’s estate in 2005. Teddy was kidnapped in 1990 and never seen alive again, despite the payment of a multi-million-dollar ransom.

The probate case dominated Hong Kong’s media for weeks after it first opened in May 2009, with the court hearing from 36 witnesses.

Chinachem’s lawyers argued that Chan duped a dying, mentally unstable woman with promises of eternal life. At the very least, they say the 2006 will leaving her fortune to him was a ritualistic prop meant to be burnt, like paper money as part of a traditional life-extending ceremony.

Lam acknowledged that Chan and Wang had been lovers, but rejected his claim that she wanted him to take control of her empire.

“Even though Nina had a secret liaison with [Chan], I do not believe that their relationship was such that she was prepared to give him her entire estate irrespective of her other commitments and responsibilities,” the judge wrote. “I do not believe Nina would give him the steer or chairmanship of the Chinachem business empire built up by the joint efforts of Nina and Teddy [Nina’s late husband] bearing in mind that he had not proved himself to be a man of good business acumen capable of leading such empire,” he wrote.

Jonathan Midgley, Chan’s lawyer, said Chan was “extremely disappointed” and would appeal the judgment. “[Chan’s] position today is the same as it has always been, namely that the will in question was given to him by Nina Wang and accordingly it is inconceivable that the will is a forgery,” he said.

Chan later insisted that the will he possesses is authentic. “When the water subsides, the rocks emerge. I believe the truth will be found out,” he said.

Dr Kung Yan-sum, Nina’s younger brother, who is on the board of the Chinachem Charitable Foundation, said he was very happy with the ruling.

“Even my sister’s spirit in the sky is also smiling,” Kung said at a press conference. “And I think the majority of the people [in Hong Kong] are happy.” He insisted that the size of the estate was certainly “in 11 digits”, that is, worth more than $10 billion.
“The money will be used to support charity work,” he said in a press conference, also attended by Nina’s sisters and their lawyer, held shortly after the judgment was handed down.

“Today’s judgment showed that there is justice in the world,” Kung, also the director of the Chinachem Group, said.

Solicitor Keith Ho, for Chinachem Charitable Foundation, said that following the judgment the entire estate of Nina would be inherited by the foundation.

The foundation had the right to claim legal fees from Chan, but without disclosing the amount, he said.

Shanghai-born Wang first became a subject of fascination in Hong Kong, the money-obsessed city of 7 million people, when Teddy was abducted for the first time on April 12, 1983. Reportedly chained to a bed for eight days, he was freed after his wife paid US$11 million in ransom.

After a second kidnapping seven years later, the Chinachem founder was never seen again, even though Wang had paid US$34 million of the US$60 million ransom demanded by his abductors.

In 1999, although his wife continued to insist that he was alive, making a point of referring to him in the present tense, Teddy was declared legally dead. In his absence, she had taken control of Chinachem and entered a prolonged battle with Teddy’snonagenarian father, Wang Din-shin, over her husband’s will, no fewer than three versions of which had turned up. The one Wang favored left everything to her.

Ultimately, in 2005, after she had lost the first two legal rounds against her father-in-law and appeared to face a prison term for forgery, the Court of Final Appeal ruled in her favor, and Chinachem was hers.

In his testimony in June, Chan, who is married with three children, said his relationship with the tycoon began in 1992, when his offer of a head massage quickly turned into a full-body treatment. Soon thereafter, he continued, she was calling him “hubby” and they were spending nights together.

Chan also produced a video in which he and Wang are seen burning money and incense at a Taoist temple in Hong Kong in a gesture that he said was intended to seal their relationship. Even before this ceremony, he testified, Wang had begun referring to him as her husband, but in the video she can clearly be heard calling him “Kung Kung” – which means eunuch in Chinese.

Chan’s defense team maintained that Wang had wanted to have a baby with him and had even undergone estrogen treatments in Canada with this aim in mind.

Chan denied knowing anything about feng shui. He said that 80 alleged holes dug in the ground at Chinachem’s properties were only “a game” between the couple and they were never intendedto be a ritual to combat Wang’s illness and to help locate her husband.

Chan, who has said he was Wang’s lover from 1992 until she died in 2007, said in his testimony his relationship with the tycoon began in 1992. Wang had left him billions of dollars in the will dated October 16, 2006, out of love, he said.

But Chinachem claimed the cash given to Chan was for feng shuiservices, and even if there was more to the relationship he was a “toy boy” or a eunuch in the court of the Empress Dowager.

The foundation contested the veracity of the will by bringing in a handwriting expert who said the signatures of Nina and two witnesses were forged.

The judge said the signatures of Nina and Winfield Wong, one of the two witnesses in the 2006 will, were highly skilled simulations.
“Having considered all the evidence, viz factual evidence and expert opinions, as well as considering relevant circumstantial background, including the relationship between Nina and Chan and her mindset in October 2006, I find that the 2006 will was not signed by Nina and it was not attested to by Winfield Wong and Ng Shun Mo [another witness in the 2006 will],” he said in ruling, which ran to more than 300 pages.

Last June, Chan testified he once advised a client to burn real money for good luck. With his intention to appeal, he is prepared to risk seeing his own go up in smoke.

Olivia Chung is a senior Asia Times Online reporter.