Hutchence's fortune is gone, HK law firm tells late singer's family

A Hong Kong-based legal firm has told the family of dead rock star Michael Hutchence that his fortune, estimated to be between $10 million and $20 million, has vanished.

The mother of the singer, Patricia Glassop, has revealed that she received a letter from Boase Cohen & Collins claiming the value of the singer's estate as of July was zero.

But this does not include three properties that the former INXS front man - who moved to Hong Kong aged four and went to school here - owned on Australia's Gold Coast worth more than $10 million, a villa in the south of France, a house in the exclusive Chelsea district of London, and a development in Lombok, Indonesia, as well as a fleet of luxury cars including a Bentley and an Aston Martin.

Those assets are controlled by a complex web of companies extending across the globe from Liberia to the British Virgin Islands, according to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald. The companies still receive royalty payments from the INXS back catalogue.

Hutchence's financial advisers told the paper that he had made the arrangements not to avoid tax, but to keep his fortune away from 'thieving relatives' and 'girlfriends'.

But Hutchence's will declares that he wanted Amnesty International and Greenpeace to receive US$250,000, and the remainder to be split among his child Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, his partner Paula Yates, and his immediate family.

Greenpeace and Amnesty International never received any of the cash. Yates, who died of a drug overdose in September 2000, was lent #100,000 (about $1.4 million) from the company controlling the royalty payments.