“The estate battle is just like a soap opera,” said Kenny Tang, Hongkong-based executive director of Redford Securities Co. “The details are too absurd even for a movie.”
Lawyers began arguments this week to determine whether Tony Chan, a bartender-turned-feng shui master, will become one of the richest men in the world.
His lawyers say Chan, 49, is the rightful heir to the fortune of the late Nina Wang, a billionaire whose pigtails, miniskirts and bobby socks earned her the nickname “Little Sweetie.” Wang’s charitable foundation is fighting his claim with, among other things, a puppet show.
It’s the latest chapter in a convoluted tale of money, love, kidnapping and allegations of forged wills.
Wang died of cancer two years ago, leaving a fortune estimated at USD4.2 billion in 2007, though the true value of her estate isn’t publicly known. After her death, the charity she helped establish was expected to take control of her fortune. At least, that’s what one of her purported wills, dated 2002, says.
But Chan produced a second will, dated 2006, declaring him the sole heir. His argument rests on the idea that he wasn’t merely Wang’s fengshui adviser but also her lover for 15 years. Chan’s lawyer, Jonathan Midgley, has produced photos showing Chan cavorting with Wang. Chan frequently joined Wang for “midnight meetings,” Mr. Midgley says. “This was a long-lasting, close and affectionate relationship.”
Wang’s longtime personal assistant, Ringo Wong (who helps administer her charity) says she loved only her late husband, Teddy. He recently helped stage an 80-minute puppet show depicting the Wangs’ ”eternal love.” The play’s 10-day run, in an auditorium just steps from Hong Kong’s harbour, ended Saturday. “Oh, I will never stop loving you, Teddy,” a wobbly, string-operated Ms. Wang cooed in one early scene, set in 1950s Shanghai.
After Hong Kong’s government blocked Wang’s plans to make Nina Tower the tallest building in the world as it was too close to the airport, she split the complex into two towers. The taller one, nicknamed Teddy Tower, was joined to the other by a sky bridge often characterized as representing a hand-holding couple.
When Wang dies in 2007, an initial will dating from 2002 indicated that her fortune was destined for a charitable foundation that would create an Asian version of the Nobel Prize. That’s when the feng shui master stepped in. Through his lawyer, Chan claimed to have a later will, signed in 2006, giving Wang’s fortune to him.According to court filings from both sides, Chan, who has been married since the early 1990s, was a former bartender and waiter. Unemployed in the late 1980s, he began studying fengshui and eventually became a “fortune teller for celebrities,” the filings say.
Chan was introduced to Wang after professing to be able to help her find her husband with the aid of a planchette, something like a Ouija board. At the “midnight meetings,” according to the court filings, Chan and Wang would visit various buildings controlled by Wang and throw jade pieces into holes dug in the ground. The purpose of the ritual is unclear.
Chan’s lawyers say the hole-digging quickly stopped and became a smoke screen for late-night trysts.
The feng shui master’s case has suffered setbacks. A handwriting expert hired by Chan’s own lawyers said Wang’s signature on the 2006 will is probably a forgery. Chan’s team has since tried to replace her with a different handwriting expert.
Chan is already a very rich man, thanks to Wang. In the years before her death, she made three payments to him of about HK$688 million (USD88.8 million) each.
The 2006 will, which unlike the earlier one is written in legal-sounding English, closes with the line: “I am deeply and thankfully convinced that my will is proudly guided with God Help.”
“This is the sort of will when you look at it, it just excites suspicion,” Denis Chang, a lawyer for Wang’s charity, said Monday at the trial’s opening in Hong Kong’s High Court. He noted that the 2002 will is written in Wang’s native Chinese.
Chang said in court on Tuesday that Chan took advantage of Wang’s faith in the supernatural, for instance holding a 49-day “reincarnation ceremony” in which she spent a night in a coffin with the hope of attaining “unending life.”
Lawyers for the foundation have also asserted that the 2006 will is merely a ceremonial “feng shui will,” meant to be burned in a traditional Chinese funeral ritual, to which Justice Johnson Lam replied in court: “This is a court of law, not a court of feng shui.”
Ian Mill, Chan’s lawyer, has also noted that Wang had cut off her famous pigtails and given them to him as a gift. The pigtails have been submitted as evidence in the case, he said Tuesday.