Feng shui master claims Asian fortune
HONG KONG: A mystery Hong Kong feng shui master on Friday
claimed the estate of Asia's richest woman Nina Wang, setting the stage
for a spectacular courtroom battle over her four billion dollar fortune.
The announcement came as relatives filed their own legal papers over
the wealth of the late eccentric, whose property empire and miser's
lifestyle made her a regular feature on both the business and the gossip
pages.
Attorneys said a 2006 will written by Wang, who died this month from
cancer aged 69, had left the entire legacy to feng shui master Chan Chun
Chuen - a figure other feng shui masters in this Chinese city said
they'd never heard of.
"Mr Chan is very honoured by the trust and affection which Nina Wang
has shown in passing her entire estate to him," said the legal notice
published in several Hong Kong newspapers.
"In dealing with it, Mr Chan will at all times have regard to the
values by which Nina Wang managed her business interests and personal
affairs during her life." Lawyer Jonathan Midgely, who also served as
Wang's counsel during her bitter eight-year battle against her
father-in-law for control of her late husband's estate, said a news
conference would be held later in the day.
In death as in life, Wang has generated controversy and filled the
daily papers in Hong Kong, a wealth-obsessed financial hub where rumours
abound over what will happen to the fortune the mini-skirt wearing mogul
left behind.
Some have even suggested there might be considerably more than the
4.2 billion US dollars Forbes estimated she was worth last year - vast
wealth she made by transforming her husband's company Chinachem into a
real estate empire.
She seized control of Chinachem after the disappearance of her
husband Teddy, who was kidnapped in 1990 and never heard from again. She
long insisted he was still alive even after the courts declared him
legally dead in 1999.
But her father-in-law Wang Din-shin, now 96, sued to get control of
Teddy's assets in a bitter court battle that saw the two sides trade
accusations of adultery, sloth and naked greed. She won in 2005.Now two
younger sisters and a brother of Nina have filed their own papers over
the estate in the name of a charity trust connected to Chinachem.
They say the trust was named as the executor of a will that Wang
purportedly wrote in 2002, possibly paving the way for a second court
fight over the fortune.
Hong Kong, Friday, AFP |
