Wife of Chinese billionaire parliamentarian Zheng Jianjiang sues Vancouver over vacant-home tax bill on US$20 million property
- Petition lodged by He Yiju says her home was ‘uninhabitable’ and contaminated by asbestos and faeces when it was hit with a US$190,000 tax for being unoccupied
- He’s tycoon husband has been a deputy of China’s National People’s Congress since 2013
The wife of Chinese billionaire and parliamentarian Zheng Jianjiang is suing Vancouver’s local government to avoid paying the Canadian city’s tax on empty homes, arguing that it was wrongly applied to her C$26.8 million (US$20.4 million) property there.
He Yiju says in a petition to the British Columbia Supreme Court that the C$249,313.67 bill, representing 1 per cent of the official 2017 value of the property, should be quashed, or a reassessment made, because she had applied in April that year to have the home demolished and redeveloped.
The 4,738 square foot home that had stood on the 0.48 hectare seaside site since 1937 has since been razed. A building permit was issued on February 11, 2019, for a new 31,393 sq ft home.
Documents filed with an affidavit in support of the petition say the former house was “uninhabitable” and contaminated by asbestos, mould and “large amounts of human/animal faeces”.
“The fact that the City did not issue the building permits until 2019 when the Petitioner or others on her behalf applied for them in 2017 was not because of any action or inaction by the Petitioner or others acting on her behalf,” says the petition, registered on June 18.