Convicted forger Peter Chan Chun-chuen was released from a Hong Kong maximum-security prison on Saturday after serving eight years for faking the will of late tycoon Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum in an attempt to claim her HK$83 billion (US$10.7 billion) fortune. At 8.30am on Saturday, a handful of people were seen waiting outside Stanley Prison for Chan. Among them was his priest. The group also carried a large lotus painting with messages of support. Donning a suit, Chan walked out of prison at 9.35am accompanied by police officers. He handed his personal belongings and a Bible to his companions and hugged some of them. “Thank you everyone,” Chan, his hair now greyer, told reporters, adding that he felt “OK”. He hurriedly got into a black car with three other men and briefly displayed some of the gifts he had received, such as a red Chinese calligraphy piece, before closing the windows. Chan made his first stop at a cemetery on Victoria Road to visit his mother’s grave. “I miss my children and wife, but I miss my mother even more because I didn’t have a chance to [bid her farewell] after she passed,” he told reporters. He spent several minutes kneeling by the grave, before his priest muttered a few words of prayer. Religious studies give jailed former feng shui master Peter Chan different focus He then addressed questions from the media. “The food in prison was bland, I think I lost weight,” Chan joked. “I’m going to take it slow and have a break first … I have to slowly get used to Hong Kong, society and life again. This takes time.” After leaving the cemetery, he went to a private housing block at Lyttelton Road in the Mid-Levels, where he said he would check on his wife, Tam Miu-ching. The couple have three children. Originally sentenced to 12 years behind bars, the former feng shui master and businessman was let out early for good behaviour. The 61-year-old, who changed his name from Tony after converting to Christianity in his early days in prison, was accused of forging Wang’s will after the tycoon died at the age of 69 in April 2007. He had asked the court to appoint him as the sole heir to her estate, claiming the pair were lovers, and said he had a will the Chinachem Group boss made in October 2006. But Chinachem Charitable Foundation, led by Wang’s brother, Kung Yan-sum, said it was a forgery, and lawyer Winfield Wong Wing-cheung said he witnessed only a “partial will” signed by Wang in 2006, which left Chan around HK$10 million. After a lengthy legal battle, the court in 2010 ruled that the 2006 will was forged and the foundation was awarded the estate. In 2011, Chan lost an appeal at Hong Kong’s top court over his claim to the estate, and the ruling led to his prosecution two years later. He was convicted in 2013 on one count of forgery and another of using a false document, and jailed for 12 years. But Chan has constantly maintained his innocence, and in a written reply to the Post in 2019 said he had “never forged any will”. He added: “I’ve often believed what’s real cannot be falsified, and vice versa – that’s the simple but eternal truth.” Feng shui master Peter Chan dealt another legal setback on road to top court The self-taught feng shui master first met Wang in 1992, when the businesswoman was desperate to locate her missing husband, Teddy Wang Teh-huei, who was kidnapped in April 1990 and never found. Over the course of the legal proceedings, the courts heard a litany of salacious claims about Chan and Wang’s purported relationship involving love, lust, greed and oddball feng shui rituals, such as boat trips the pair took to seek help from deities in finding the dying tycoon’s husband. Chan claimed in court that Wang – who was more than 20 years his senior – had been his lover, and in an interview with the Post in 2013, he said they had discussed him divorcing his wife and marrying the tycoon instead. But prosecutors accused Chan of preying on Wang’s superstitions and loneliness in an attempt to enrich himself.