Peter Chan: reinvention of a nobody with a big smile
He was just married, living in a public housing flat, when he met the woman who made him her HK$2.7b penthouse lover
Austin Chiu 05 July 2013
From bartender to fung shui master, Peter Chan Chun-chuen rose from being a nobody living in a public housing flat to a man worth more than HK$2.7 billion.
A self-taught fung shui practitioner, Chan, now 53, amassed most of his fortune by pleasing late tycoon Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum - as her lover, as he claims, or as her sycophantic eunuch, as Wang’s siblings have claimed.
Whatever the real nature of their relationship, they stayed close. Yet there was no concrete proof of their intimacy until a video supplied by Chan was played in court last month. It showed Wang locking lips with Chan, 23 years her junior, and him running his hands over her body on an excursion to Sai Kung.
Chan’s father was a secondary school teacher and his mother a housewife. He completed his education at Matteo Ricci College, and, at 18, got a job as a bartender at the South China Club for a few months before working as a machinery salesman for five years. Chan had been jobless for a year when he met his wife, Tam Miu-ching, a tour guide, in Beijing in 1989.
He moved in with Tam’s family in a public housing estate in Lam Tin before they married on March 9, 1992.
Just three days later he had a fateful encounter with Wang, a woman desperate to locate her missing husband, Teddy Wang Teh-huei, who was kidnapped in 1990 and was never seen again.
Despite Chan’s alleged rapid development of an affair with Wang, he stayed with Tam. They have three children - a son named Wealthee; a daughter, Xenia, whose birth by caesarean section in 1995 Chan arranged to coincide with Wang’s birthday; and a son, Yannis.
Chan picked up fung shui by reading a book entitled The Heavenly Graphs and Layouts, passed on to him by his father.
He claimed his influential clients included lawyers and legislators such as Abraham Razack, Allen Lee Peng-fei and Stephen Cheong Kam-chuen. Disgraced former lawmaker Gilbert Leung Kam-ho introduced Chan to Wang in 1992, before he was jailed for bribery, hoping that he could help him secure a commercial contract from Wang’s Chinachem Group.
There was no contract, but the encounter spawned a long list of salacious claims about love, lust, greed and oddball fung shui rituals.
It was a HK$53,000 head rub at Wang’s residence on the top floor of the Chinachem headquarters that Chan said ignited the bitterly disputed love affair.
Chan said in a court statement that Wang would ask him to cuddle her naked to sleep. When they had sex for the first time, it was before a statue of Buddha.
“During our time together, I would massage her, and we would then engage in loving, passionate sex,” Chan said in a statement filed with the court.
“Nina very much took the initiative in this respect. I was captivated by her. She aroused great desire in me and we shared immense satisfaction in our sexual relationship.”
Chan said Wang regularly gave him cash payments of between HK$300,000 and HK$1 million, boosted considerably by three mammoth payments of HK$688 million each.
Desperate for a child, allegedly with Chan, Wang took high doses of hormones, hoping in vain to become fertile.
The court heard that Wang was involved in many eccentric fung shui rituals. Wang ordered contractors dig as many as 80 fung shui holes to be filled with pieces of jade at Chinachem-owned properties, in what many fung shui masters regarded as planting a “life base”. Chan denied it was his idea.
Wang was eventually diagnosed with cancer, which killed her in 2007. Within days, Chan, emerged into the spotlight with that broad smile of his to proclaim himself Wang’s lover, producing the forged will to claim Wang’s HK$83 billion estate.
He waged the so-called “battle of the wills” against the Chinachem Charitable Foundation, which is named as the trustee of Wang’s estate under another will.
Chan lost appeal after appeal, with judges calling him “thoroughly dishonest”, before the city’s highest court threw his case out in October 2011.
Five months earlier he had been arrested and charged with forging the will.
Just weeks before his criminal trial began, Chan converted to Christianity and renounced fung shui, calling, it “a work of evil”.
He also announced that his son had been stripped of his name “Wealthee”.
ILL WILL
September 2005 The Court of Final Appeal rules handwritten 1990 will of Teddy Wang Teh-huei, naming his wife as sole beneficiary, was last valid will. Judgment ends eight-year legal battle for control of the Chinachem empire between Nina Wang and her father-in-law Wang Din-shin
April 3, 2007 Nina Wang dies of cancer, aged 69
April 5 Self-styled fung shui master Tony Chan Chun-chuen gives 2006 will to lawyer Jonathan Midgley, claiming to be Nina Wang’s sole beneficiary
April 7 Lawyer tells Wang’s siblings about the document
October 31 Chan asks High Court to appoint administrators to protect Wang’s assets in first public appearance since claiming to be the sole heir
March 20, 2009 Chinachem declares 2006 will leaving Wang’s multibillion-dollar estate to Chan is a forgery
April 14 Chinachem claims the will was meant only for fung shui purposes and should have been burned at Wang’s funeral
April 27 Court told two handwriting experts conclude signature on it is a forgery
May 11 Probate hearing starts
September 21 Parties deliver final submissions
January 13, 2010 Handicapped man jailed for 28 months after pleading guilty to sending more than 10 threatening letters to Mr Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon, Chan and others in the probate hearing
February 2 Judge rejects Chan’s claim, ruling that the will is a forgery
April 24 Inland Revenue Department submits writ to District Court, claiming Chan owes profit taxes of HK$346.8 million for financial years 2005 to 2007
January 10, 2011 Chan returns to court for appeal. He submits new evidence including a video in which he refers to Wang as “Piggy” and himself as “Daddy Piggy”
February 14 Court of Appeal dismisses Chan’s appeal, saying it has “no hesitation” in tossing out the “thoroughly dishonest case”
May 26 Chan is charged with forging the 2006 will on which he based his failed probate battle for Wang’s fortune. He is released on HK$20 million bail and HK$20 million surety from his brother on condition that he surrender travel documents and does not leave Hong Kong, live in his residence on The Peak and report to police twice a week
October 24 Court of Final Appeal dismisses Chan’s application for leave to appeal, bringing his battle for Wang’s estate to a close
March 5, 2013 Chan announces he has renounced geomancy for Christianity, changing his name to Peter. He is christened at Crossroad Community Baptist Church in Tsing Yi
April 22 Chan’s trial for forgery begins in Court of First Instance
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Peter Chan: reinvention of a nobody with a big smile
He was just married, living in a public housing flat, when he met the woman who made him her HK$2.7b penthouse lover
Austin Chiu
05 July 2013
From bartender to fung shui master, Peter Chan Chun-chuen rose from being a nobody living in a public housing flat to a man worth more than HK$2.7 billion.
A self-taught fung shui practitioner, Chan, now 53, amassed most of his fortune by pleasing late tycoon Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum - as her lover, as he claims, or as her sycophantic eunuch, as Wang’s siblings have claimed.
Whatever the real nature of their relationship, they stayed close. Yet there was no concrete proof of their intimacy until a video supplied by Chan was played in court last month. It showed Wang locking lips with Chan, 23 years her junior, and him running his hands over her body on an excursion to Sai Kung.
Chan’s father was a secondary school teacher and his mother a housewife. He completed his education at Matteo Ricci College, and, at 18, got a job as a bartender at the South China Club for a few months before working as a machinery salesman for five years. Chan had been jobless for a year when he met his wife, Tam Miu-ching, a tour guide, in Beijing in 1989.
He moved in with Tam’s family in a public housing estate in Lam Tin before they married on March 9, 1992.
Just three days later he had a fateful encounter with Wang, a woman desperate to locate her missing husband, Teddy Wang Teh-huei, who was kidnapped in 1990 and was never seen again.
Despite Chan’s alleged rapid development of an affair with Wang, he stayed with Tam. They have three children - a son named Wealthee; a daughter, Xenia, whose birth by caesarean section in 1995 Chan arranged to coincide with Wang’s birthday; and a son, Yannis.
Chan picked up fung shui by reading a book entitled The Heavenly Graphs and Layouts, passed on to him by his father.
He claimed his influential clients included lawyers and legislators such as Abraham Razack, Allen Lee Peng-fei and Stephen Cheong Kam-chuen. Disgraced former lawmaker Gilbert Leung Kam-ho introduced Chan to Wang in 1992, before he was jailed for bribery, hoping that he could help him secure a commercial contract from Wang’s Chinachem Group.
There was no contract, but the encounter spawned a long list of salacious claims about love, lust, greed and oddball fung shui rituals.
It was a HK$53,000 head rub at Wang’s residence on the top floor of the Chinachem headquarters that Chan said ignited the bitterly disputed love affair.
Chan said in a court statement that Wang would ask him to cuddle her naked to sleep. When they had sex for the first time, it was before a statue of Buddha.
“During our time together, I would massage her, and we would then engage in loving, passionate sex,” Chan said in a statement filed with the court.
“Nina very much took the initiative in this respect. I was captivated by her. She aroused great desire in me and we shared immense satisfaction in our sexual relationship.”
Chan said Wang regularly gave him cash payments of between HK$300,000 and HK$1 million, boosted considerably by three mammoth payments of HK$688 million each.
Desperate for a child, allegedly with Chan, Wang took high doses of hormones, hoping in vain to become fertile.
The court heard that Wang was involved in many eccentric fung shui rituals. Wang ordered contractors dig as many as 80 fung shui holes to be filled with pieces of jade at Chinachem-owned properties, in what many fung shui masters regarded as planting a “life base”. Chan denied it was his idea.
Wang was eventually diagnosed with cancer, which killed her in 2007. Within days, Chan, emerged into the spotlight with that broad smile of his to proclaim himself Wang’s lover, producing the forged will to claim Wang’s HK$83 billion estate.
He waged the so-called “battle of the wills” against the Chinachem Charitable Foundation, which is named as the trustee of Wang’s estate under another will.
Chan lost appeal after appeal, with judges calling him “thoroughly dishonest”, before the city’s highest court threw his case out in October 2011.
Five months earlier he had been arrested and charged with forging the will.
Just weeks before his criminal trial began, Chan converted to Christianity and renounced fung shui, calling, it “a work of evil”.
He also announced that his son had been stripped of his name “Wealthee”.
ILL WILL
September 2005 The Court of Final Appeal rules handwritten 1990 will of Teddy Wang Teh-huei, naming his wife as sole beneficiary, was last valid will. Judgment ends eight-year legal battle for control of the Chinachem empire between Nina Wang and her father-in-law Wang Din-shin
April 3, 2007 Nina Wang dies of cancer, aged 69
April 5 Self-styled fung shui master Tony Chan Chun-chuen gives 2006 will to lawyer Jonathan Midgley, claiming to be Nina Wang’s sole beneficiary
April 7 Lawyer tells Wang’s siblings about the document
October 31 Chan asks High Court to appoint administrators to protect Wang’s assets in first public appearance since claiming to be the sole heir
March 20, 2009 Chinachem declares 2006 will leaving Wang’s multibillion-dollar estate to Chan is a forgery
April 14 Chinachem claims the will was meant only for fung shui purposes and should have been burned at Wang’s funeral
April 27 Court told two handwriting experts conclude signature on it is a forgery
May 11 Probate hearing starts
September 21 Parties deliver final submissions
January 13, 2010 Handicapped man jailed for 28 months after pleading guilty to sending more than 10 threatening letters to Mr Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon, Chan and others in the probate hearing
February 2 Judge rejects Chan’s claim, ruling that the will is a forgery
April 24 Inland Revenue Department submits writ to District Court, claiming Chan owes profit taxes of HK$346.8 million for financial years 2005 to 2007
January 10, 2011 Chan returns to court for appeal. He submits new evidence including a video in which he refers to Wang as “Piggy” and himself as “Daddy Piggy”
February 14 Court of Appeal dismisses Chan’s appeal, saying it has “no hesitation” in tossing out the “thoroughly dishonest case”
May 26 Chan is charged with forging the 2006 will on which he based his failed probate battle for Wang’s fortune. He is released on HK$20 million bail and HK$20 million surety from his brother on condition that he surrender travel documents and does not leave Hong Kong, live in his residence on The Peak and report to police twice a week
October 24 Court of Final Appeal dismisses Chan’s application for leave to appeal, bringing his battle for Wang’s estate to a close
March 5, 2013 Chan announces he has renounced geomancy for Christianity, changing his name to Peter. He is christened at Crossroad Community Baptist Church in Tsing Yi
April 22 Chan’s trial for forgery begins in Court of First Instance
July 4 Chan is found guilty of forging the will
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