Dallas - Eat Your Heart Out!

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

13 August 2001

Hong Kong was riveted last week. Soaps went unwatched, the racecourse was deserted, no-one traded stocks. What can it have been? Perhaps China had invaded Taiwan? Perhaps the airport had finally sunk into the sea? Perhaps Richard Li had taken over Hutchison Whampoa?

Nothing so dull: it was Nina Wang's day in court, and the mini-skirted billionairess was pitted against her equally rich father-in-law, Wang Din-shin, over her disappeared husband's will.

Nina's husband, property tycoon Teddy Wang, 56, was abducted on April 10, 1990. That was the last that was seen of him, and he was declared legally dead on September 22, 1999. Ms Wang took over as chairman of Chinachem Group, Hong Kong's largest privately held property company, soon after her husband disappeared; but where was his will?

Wang Din-shin says that a will made on March 15, 1968 and kept in a safe deposit box was the last will made by his son. It names Mr Wang Sr as the executor and the trustee of his son's estate. And why would he have disinherited his wife? Because she had an affair with the manager of a warehouse used by the property company, claims Mr Wang.

Now 89, Mr Wang says he found out about the liaison when, by chance, he saw his daughter-in-law sitting with another man at the airport. They were acting "like boyfriend and girlfriend", he said. Mr Wang said he told his son what he had seen and his son later asked him to engage private detectives to investigate the pair and photograph them. He was shown photographs in court and said he was 100 per cent sure five of them depicted Ms Wang with another man.

His son was 'so furious that he said he would have to beat this man to death and I said, 'No, you cannot, you cannot'," Mr Wang said. Later, Teddy Wang told his father there was no need to investigate further as his wife had confessed. They paid $2,500 for the detective work.

Mr Wang Sr. alleges that Mrs Wang then forged a will in her favour. Teddy Wang's sister told the court last week that she saw Ms Wang practising her husband's signature and boasting that her imitation of his signature was excellent. A four page will made in 1990 names her as the sole beneficiary, but a government chemist who testified this week said that this will "might not have been written by him."

The case continues in court this week, and will no doubt also continue to dominate Hong Kong's population to the cost of bookies, stockbrokers and traders. Locals say that such cases are inevitable as long as most of Hong Kong continues to be owned by families - at least it's more interesting than a class action for disenfranchisement of minority shareholders after a takeover battle, which would be a sort of corporate equivalent. All that's needed now is for Teddy to make a dramatic 11th hour reappearance in the court-room - but even Dallas couldn't have got away with that.

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