A court battle over the fortune of eccentric Hong Kong tycoon Nina Wang began Monday, pitting a charitable foundation against a feng shui master for her estimated 13-billion-dollar estate.
The eight-week trial will decide whether Wang, who at one stage was Asia’s richest woman, left her entire fortune to businessman and feng shui master Tony Chan when she died of cancer in 2007 at age 69.
Opposing Chan’s claim is Wang’s Chinachem Charitable Foundation, which is now controlled by her siblings, who say a will awarding Chan the huge fortune is a fake.
In a city obsessed with the behaviour of tycoons, Wang’s story — a heady mixture of kidnap, feng shui, sex, money, family rows and fried chicken — has gripped the local attention.
Queues formed for seats in the courtroom’s public gallery on the first day of the trial, while a scrum of photographers and cameramen tried to grab a shot of the star lawyers and a shaven-headed Chan as they entered the High Court.
Opening the trial, Chinachem lawyer Denis Chang said the court should ignore Chan’s claim and instead recognise an earlier will, which awarded the estate to the foundation that Wang had set up with her husband Teddy.
“This is a court of law, not a court of feng shui,” Chang told the court. He said the 2002 will reflected Wang’s true wishes before she became too ill. “(Teddy and Nina) were childless. For them, Chinachem was their baby,” he said.
Wang left an estate estimated to be worth up to 100 billion Hong Kong dollars (12.8 billion US), although the exact sum remains difficult to assess.