Wednesday 3 February 2010

A will? No way

Police may probe Tony Chan after judge dismisses as forgery the will purported to leave him Nina Wang’s billions

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Guanyu said...

A will? No way

Police may probe Tony Chan after judge dismisses as forgery the will purported to leave him Nina Wang’s billions

03 February 2010

Fung shui master Tony Chan Chun-chuen faces the possibility of a criminal investigation after a judge dismissed as a forgery the will he claimed Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum had written leaving him her multibillion-dollar fortune.

After hearing yesterday’s long-awaited verdict, Chan’s solicitor Jonathan Midgley read out a statement saying Chan was “extremely disappointed” and would appeal.

Mobbed by photographers and journalists as he left a commercial building in Central, Chan, who claims he and Wang - head of the Chinachem property empire - were lovers for 15 years, reiterated he was not worried. “The truth will be out eventually. I know the will was genuine. Wang handed it to me personally. It was absolutely not forged.”

A senior police officer said officers from the commercial crime bureau and the crime wing had been monitoring the case since it went to court. “We will study the judgment and seek advice from the Department of Justice before deciding our next move.”

The officer refused to say whether Chan had been under surveillance.

Wang’s brother, Dr. Kung Yan-sum, said: “I think my big sister up there will also smile. She must be extremely happy now. We will try to accomplish the wish of our sister. We will work hard for the betterment of her charitable foundation.”

He said his sister’s fortune was at least HK$10 billion. It had been previously estimated at HK$100 billion.

Handing down his 326-page judgment on the sensational battle between Chan and the Chinachem Charitable Foundation, Mr. Justice Johnson Lam Man-hong said he had come to the conclusion that the will Chan claimed Wang had signed on October 16, 2006, was forged.

Events yesterday echoed those in 2002 when Wang lost her first battle with her father-in-law Wang Din-shin over the inheritance of her abducted husband’s assets. A judge also ruled then that the will on which she based her claim was forged, and Wang faced a police investigation. The lower court’s ruling was eventually overturned in the Court of Final Appeal and criminal charges against her dropped.

Central to Lam’s ruling was his finding that Wang’s purported signature on Chan’s will, and that of a witness, Winfield Wong Wing-cheung, were “highly skilled simulations”. The handwriting expert Chan called upon to support his claim was unable to explain significant differences between some of the handwriting in the documents and samples from their purported authors.

Lam found that the witnesses who Chan claimed were signatories to his will had signed another document giving a man surnamed Chan HK$10 million, but not Chan’s document.

Another key issue in the trial was the alleged intimate relationship between Chan and Wang. Chan testified she left him everything purely out of love. But the judge found that from the moment she made a will in 2002 leaving everything to her charitable foundation until her death aged 69 in 2007, she had not changed her mind. He said giving Chan gifts and even huge sums of money was one thing, but leaving him her entire estate was another.

The court further ruled that it would have been improper for Wang to appoint Chan to steer her business empire, which was jointly built up by her and her husband, and she had never prepared Chan to succeed her.

The judge also ruled Chan was not a credible witness and many things he said in court were “tailored to suit his convenience”, and that he gave conflicting evidence about Wang’s wish to keep their relationship secret.

Lam ordered Chan to pay costs.