Jade pieces hidden inside secret fung shui holes. A boy named Wealthee Chan. The HK$50,000 head rub that ignited a bitterly disputed love affair. A pigtailed billionaire intent on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Claims about sketchy land deals, charlatan fung shui masters, crooked lawyers and millions of dollars carried away by the truckload.
If nothing else, the blockbuster trial over Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum's fortune will be remembered for its daily serving of salacious, wild and often bizarre details. For two months, the Court of First Instance probate hearing, which wrapped up on July 11, was the undisputed topic of conversation around office water coolers and beer-soaked bar tables.
Some of the most shocking details appeared dubiously relevant to the case. But a media frenzy lapped up every titbit. At the centre of the gossip mill was Tony Chan Chun-chuen, the perma-smiled businessman vying for Wang's estimated HK$100 billion fortune. To many observers, Mr Chan, always accompanied by his bushy-browed assistant Raymond Chu Wai-man, was either the man who got lucky or a shameless bartender-turned-fung shui master who conned his way into the billionaire's heart, and purse.
Wang's Chinachem Charitable Foundation was relentless in trying to humiliate and discredit its rival for the massive fortune, a point perhaps best typified by one of the charity's lawyers mimicking Mr Chan as he testified.
A long-time friend of Wang's said he tried to isolate her from friends and family. Combative and emotional on the witness stand, Wang's three siblings also did little to hide their dislike for Chinachem's nemesis, casting doubt on Mr Chan's claims that he had a 15-year affair with their elder sister. They portrayed Mr Chan as both a mind-controlling fung shui master and sycophantic eunuch who bowed at the feet of his empress, the eccentric Wang. Among Mr Chan's litany of sins was that he lied to Wang when he claimed that, after speaking to Buddha, the ill woman would live another 20 years, one sister claimed.
'He was never Nina's designated heir,' Chinachem barrister Denis Chang, SC, declared in his opening statement on May 11 in the court.