Court jester settles in passports case, but Tonga is not laughing

Island nation receives paltry payout for the US$26m lost by trusted American

A legal case involving the world's only court jester, who squandered a fortune made from selling citizenship of a tiny South Pacific country to anxious Hongkongers ahead of the handover, reached a settlement yesterday.

Jesse Bogdonoff, a Buddhist businessman from North Carolina who was appointed the official court jester to Tonga, was ordered by a San Francisco court to pay back US$1 million.

The meagre amount will be of little comfort to the Tongan government, however. Bogdonoff, who often wore a three-pointed jester's hat as part of his unusual job, was accused of losing US$26 million, or half the country's annual revenue, in a series of disastrous investments that came to light in 2001.

The saga began in the 1980s, when the Tongan government approved a scheme by a Hong Kong businessman, George Chen, to sell passports to foreigners.

Between 1983 and 1991, more than 5,000 passports were sold for US$20,000 each, many of them to anxious Hongkongers. Those who took up the offer of citizenship included the disgraced former head of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Ronald Li Fook-shiu and Hong Kong textile millionaire Chen Din-hwa.

Passports were also bought by former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda, who were then living in exile.