Eccentric billionaire to keep her fortune
Appeal court rules husband’s will wasn’t faked
The richest woman in Hong Kong will not be stripped of her multibillion-dollar fortune after all, after winning a bitter legal battle over her murdered husband’s estate.
Nina Wang, an eccentric real estate tycoon, renowned for her garish clothes and bizarre hairstyles, finally won an eight-year legal battle with her aged fatherinyesterday when Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal unanimously overturned a lower court ruling that she had forged a 1990 will in order to secure her husband’s entire estate.
The celebrated court case, which tantalized Asia with accusations of adultery and murder, greed, forgery and fraud, came to an end when the appeal court judges ruled a handwritten will by Mrs. Wang’s husband, Teddy, was genuine.
Mrs. Wang, who is nicknamed Siu Timtim or “Little Sweetie,” rose to fame and inherited a fortune on April 10, 1990, when her husband Teddy Wang Teh-Huei, then the 13th wealthiest man in Hong Kong, was kidnapped from his Mercedes outside the elite Hong Kong Jockey Club.
He was bound and gagged and stashed away on a sampan in one of Hong Kong’s typhoon shelters while a triad gang demanded a US$66-million ransom.
It was the second time Mr. Wang had been kidnapped. In 1983, his family paid US$11-million for his freedom.
But this time he disappeared, despite the payment of a US$34million installment on his ransom.
Years later, a member of the Sun Yee On triad pleaded guilty to participating in the kidnapping and testified Mr. Wang died when he was thrown into the sea during a police motorboat chase.
A total of 21 people have been jailed in Hong Kong and Taiwan for their involvement in the case, but no one has ever been convicted of his murder and Mr. Wang’s body was never recovered.
For years, Mrs. Wang refused to accept her husband’s death and fought attempts to have him declared legally dead.
By insisting her husband was alive Mrs. Wang used a 1963 document granting her power of attorney to continue running his businesses and turned his real estate holdings into a multibillionempire.
As head of ChinaChem, the largest privately held real estate company in Hong Kong, Mrs. Wang collects rents on more than 200 high-rise housing projects and office buildings. She also has investments in Taiwan’s second-largest shipping company, pharmaceutical firms in the United States, Hong Kong’s largest movie and leisure companies and the Canadian-based Playdium Entertainment Corp.
ChinaChem also runs meatpacking plants in China and is one of the mainland’s largest importers of plastics, petrochemicals, rubber and animal feed.
Shanghai-born Mrs. Wang is one of the best connected Hong Kong business leaders in China and serves as an appointed consultant to China’s National People’s Congress.
Forbes magazine valued her personal fortune at around US$3.2-billion.
An eccentric, who regularly dyed her pigtails to match the micro-miniskirts she insisted on wearing well into her 60s, Mrs. Wang once proposed constructing the world’s tallest building in Hong Kong, a 108-storey edifice that was going to be called the Nina Tower.
The project was abandoned because it would have been in the way of jets taking off from Hong Kong’s new international airport.
Mr. Wang was finally declared legally dead in 1999, setting off a fight over his estate that centred on three different wills.
The first was written in 1960 and split Mr. Wang’s fortune equally between his wife and father. The second, prepared in 1968, left everything to his father. A third, four-page, handwritten version, prepared just one month before he was kidnapped in 1990, left everything to Mrs. Wang.
Mrs. Wang’s father-in-law, Wang Din-shin, the founder of ChinaChem, claimed the third will was a forgery and insisted he was his son’s sole heir. He said his son signed a will leaving everything to him in 1968 after he discovered his wife was having an affair with a warehouse manager.
Mrs. Wang said she and her husband had resolved their differences by the time he made his last will in 1990.
In a 558-page judgment handed down in 2002, High Court Judge David Yam said he believed the 1990 will was a forgery.
He questioned why Mr. Wang would make a home-made will after his two previous wills were drawn up by lawyers and he cast doubt on the authenticity of a document that occasionally lapsed into the poetic, declaring: “One life, one love. She is the one I love most in this world. After my death, all my property, even my body, belongs to my wife.”
Mr. Wang’s father testified the will was totally out of character for his son.
“[Teddy] was a workaholic and he was very smart in keeping money,” he said. “He would never behave like that.”
When the lower courts declared the 1990 will invalid, they ordered Mrs. Wang to hand over at least US$128-million that she had received after her husband’s death.
Yesterday’s decision overturned that judgment and ruled there was no legal cause for suspecting the 1990 will was a forgery.
The 253-page verdict declares: “It was far more likely that [Mr. Wang] would leave his portion of that empire to the appellant [Mrs. Wang] who had built it with him and who would be able to continue operating it, than leave it to an octogenarian who had already been in retirement for 13 years.”
Last January, Mrs. Wang was charged with forgery and was released US$ 7.1- million bail.
Yesterday Hong Kong’s justice department said it will study the latest court ruling before deciding if it will proceed with the charges.