Sunday 27 September 2009
Grande boss’ evidence not real, court told
Christopher Ho Wing-on, a former Ernst & Young partner, is charged by Akai ‘s liquidators with misappropriating most of the consumer electronic company’s assets just before it was wound up in 2000 and transferring them into his Hong Kong-listed vehicle, Grande Holdings.
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Grande boss’ evidence not real, court told
Akai liquidators query loan papers
Naomi Rovnick
26 September 2009
Another defendant in the protracted legal battle over the collapse of disgraced entrepreneur James Ting’s Akai Holdings empire has been accused of lodging questionable evidence with the court.
Christopher Ho Wing-on, a former Ernst & Young partner, is charged by Akai ‘s liquidators with misappropriating most of the consumer electronic company’s assets just before it was wound up in 2000 and transferring them into his Hong Kong-listed vehicle, Grande Holdings.
Yesterday, liquidator Borrelli Walsh accused Ho of providing loan documents to the court that did not look authentic.
On Wednesday, Ernst & Young paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle a separate High Court case in which it was accused of negligently auditing Akai.
Ernst & Young’s defence collapsed after the liquidators claimed the accounting firm’s staff had falsified and doctored evidence that it then used in court pleadings and witness statements.
Akai’s second High Court trial, against Ho and Grande, will not start until at least the end of this year. But since late 2007, Ho has been the subject of several pre-trial hearings concerning his personal assets.
Yesterday, Leslie Kosmin, counsel for the liquidators, produced a loan agreement provided by Ho purportedly showing he had mortgaged his 67 per cent stake in Grande in 2004 to secure a HK$500 million gambling loan.
The lender named was Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau, casino mogul Stanley Ho Hung-sun’s holding company.
Stanley Ho, who is in hospital following a brain operation, founded Grande and remains its “honorary chairman”.
Kosmin said the loan agreement did not look real.
He said the document was “not on company-headed paper, had no signature on it apart from [Christopher] Ho’s, and has never been disclosed to the court before”.
“We are not prepared to accept [the document] as authentic,” Kosmin said.
Christopher Smith, counsel for Christopher Ho, did not respond to that accusation.
Stanley Ho is not implicated in any Akai litigation.
In February, the court froze Christopher Ho’s personal assets so he could not dispose of any properties or businesses that may have belonged to Akai.
After Ho flouted terms of that order, the court gave control of his assets - including luxury properties, Rolls-Royce and Porsche cars, art and crystal collections and shareholdings in about 50 companies and trusts - to a receiver, Robin Darton of law firm Tanner Dewitt.
In previous hearings, the liquidators claimed that Ho’s net worth was about US$500 million. He controls 50 companies and trusts, including a hotel chain in the United States and Canada.
On September 1, Mr. Justice William Stone wrote in a judgment that Ho was “deftly pulling the strings of his corporate empire with the aim of safeguarding assets which otherwise would be available to satisfy any judgment against him”.
Ho left Ernst & Young Hong Kong in 1991. Immediately before he left, lawyers for the liquidators have stated in pre-trial hearings he was one of Akai’s senior auditors at Ernst & Young.
The liquidators have said in court that when they began their work on Akai in 2001, there was only US$167,000 in cash left in the business.
Ting was jailed for false accounting in 2005 although his conviction was overturned in 2007 because of errors in the prosecution’s case.
All of Akai’s main assets, it is alleged, were transferred to Grande in a so-called management agreement, which Ernst & Young advised on.
The accounting giant is not a defendant or a party in this case against Ho and Grande.
Stanley Ho and Christopher Ho are reportedly distant relatives.
Stanley Ho chairs another Hong Kong-listed company, DVN (Holdings), where Christopher Ho’s sister, Christine Lai-shan Ho Asprey, is an independent non-executive director. Asprey is also on the board of Grande.
A spokesman for STDM could not be found while a spokeswoman for Shun Tak Holdings, Stanley Ho’s other holding company, said she could not respond to questions about STDM.
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