Chan's chutzpah hits geomancers hard
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - The scandal-laced odyssey may be over for this city's boldest feng shui fraudster, Peter (formerly Tony) Chan Chun-chuen, who is now languishing in Stanley Prison after being convicted of forgery earlier this month. But the repercussions from Chan's colossal greed and chutzpah will be felt for years to come among his fellow geomancers in Hong Kong, the fortune-telling capital of the world.
Thanks to Chan's egregiously poor example, the ancient art of assuring good health and fortune through a harmonious meeting of wind and water - belief in which has continued to thrive in this
modern, well-educated city - may never be the same again. While no one is predicting the death of feng shui among the Chinese, practitioners in Hong Kong can now count on heightened legal scrutiny and regulation that - at least in Chan's case - has meant a huge increase in personal taxation.
The 5,000-year history of geomancy is littered with avaricious charlatans who have taken advantage of emperors and commoners alike but even given this long chronicle of quackery and cupidity, Chan's name stands out in the Hall of Shame.
Not content with the hundreds of millions in US dollars he had taken in feng shui fees from a modern-day empress - the late Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum, chairlady of a major Hong Kong property developer, Chinachem Group, and Asia's richest woman at the time of her death in 2007 - Chan attempted to grab Wang's entire US$4 billion fortune by, a Hong Kong jury found, forging her will.
Along the way, the 53-year-old bartender-turned-geomancer, a married father of three children, claimed to be not only the feng shui master but also the long-time lover of Wang, who died of ovarian cancer, aged 69. And Chan produced a document, dated 2006, which he claimed to be Wang's last will and testament, leaving her entire fortune to him.
The 2006 document contradicted an earlier 2002 will in which Wang had bequeathed all of her wealth to the Chinachem Charitable Foundation, operated by members of her family, and was challenged by the foundation in court. During the sensational, 171-day trial, Chan's defense team presented photographs, video and their client's personal testimony in an effort to prove his enduring dalliance with the eccentric billionairess popularly known as "Little Sweetie" because of her penchant, even in her sixties, for miniskirts and pigtails.
In the end, however, none of that evidence- titillating though it was - mattered to the judge trying the case. In February of 2010, Justice Johnson Lam Man-hon, finding Wang's signature on the purported 2006 will to be "a highly skilled simulation," ruled in favor of Chinachem, adding that he found Chan to be "untruthful, unreliable and lacking in credibility."
Chan's magical feng shui world of riches has been rapidly unraveling ever since.
The day after Lam's ruling, Hong Kong police arrested Chan on the charge of forgery; meanwhile, the city's Inland Revenue Department had sent him a bill for HK$300 million (US$38.7 million) in back taxes he owed on income, revealed during the trial, that he had earned from Wang for his geomantic services - although Chan maintained that the fortune Wang provided for him was simply a "gift" of love and appreciation.
He was also ordered to pay the foundation's legal bill of US$18 million.
Things went from bad to worse for the once high-flying feng shui master on July 4, when a jury, voting 6 to 2, found him guilty of forgery and use of a false instrument. Then came the 12-year jail sentence from another exasperated and contemptuous Hong Kong judge, who characterized Chan as "shameless, cruel and extremely greedy."
In addition, Justice Andrew Macrae told Chan: "Notwithstanding that you received during Mrs. Wang's lifetime well over HK$3 billion (US$387 million), which enabled you to carry on a life of luxury few people in the world could ever imagine, you were not content with that and decided that you would have her business empire and estate as well . . . I have no doubt from the evidence I have heard that you are nothing more than a clever and no doubt beguiling charlatan."
Before the forgery trial, Chan had renounced feng shui and converted to Christianity, changing his name from Tony to Peter, but the judge was unmoved, describing him as a an "insidious, shameless, wicked" man who felt no remorse for his wrongdoing.
From his Stanley prison cell, Chan has filed an appeal against his conviction. Given the evidence, however, few legal experts think it will be granted. And so it appears Peter/Tony Chan-who, thanks to Wang's largesse, had grown accustomed to a life of precious luxury-will be spending the next dozen years in much humbler circumstances.
While it may be tempting to see the Chan saga as a morality tale at the end of which a sinister man taking advantage of a dying woman finally gets his comeuppance, reality is more complex. In a broader view, Chan becomes just another bizarre chapter in the long-running, morally checkered Wang soap opera that has kept Hong Kong fixated for decades.
Although his body has never been found, Wang's husband, Teddy, founder of Chinachem Group, was declared legally dead in 1999, nine years after his kidnapping as he left the Hong Kong Jockey Club. He had also been abducted in 1983 but was released eight days later after his wife paid a US$4.2 million ransom.
In a foreshadowing of the Chan-Chinachem dispute over Nina Wang's will, Teddy's father, Wang Din-shin, engaged his daughter-in-law in a prolonged legal battle for ownership of Chinachem also involving competing wills, one giving Teddy's fortune to his father and another, written just prior to his final abduction, giving it to his wife.
In the initial 2002 court judgment-which followed another sensational trial during which Nina was portrayed as an adulteress-Wang Din-shin was awarded all of his son's assets. After losing a 2004 appeal, Nina was charged with forgery of the will she had used to make her case.
In 2005, however, Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal overturned that ruling, awarding her absolute control of Chinachem.
So the moral of what has become the epic Wang family narrative is at best unclear and at worst condemnatory all around. The only certainty: thanks to Tony/Peter Chan, Hong Kong fortune-tellers have become a taxable enterprise. And that could be a good thing.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at kewing56@gmail.com Follow him on Twitter: @KentEwing1
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