A Taiwanese fugitive tycoon's wife must pay NT$740.85 million (US$24.29 million) to a Taiwan-based bank, a judge in Los Angeles ruled on Friday.
Elihn Berle, a judge of the Superior Court of California, ordered Wang Chin She-ying (王金世英), wife of Wang You-theng (王又曾), founder of the financially distressed Rebar Asia-Pacific Group (力霸亞太企業集團), to pay the principal and interest owed by the Rebar group to Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀), as Wang Chin She-ying was the guarantor of the group’s loans.
Wang Chin She-ying, who has 60 days to appeal, was not present in court when Berle announced the ruling. Thomas Robins and Hung Maan-huei (洪滿惠), representing Mega Bank, said they were “gratified” to hear the verdict, saying that the bank can now begin to recover the money.
Wang Chin She-ying has to pay the principal of NT$663.496 million, plus interest of NT$77.35 million, the ruling said.
Berle also ordered her to pay all expenses and legal fees since the court began to handle the case in January.
This amount will be announced later after careful calculations, Berle said.
The judge ordered Wang Chin She-ying not to transfer stocks of Omni Bank (安利銀行) in California under her name before paying her debts, but Mega’s lawyers said that she had already transferred most of the stocks to her son early this year before the litigation process began.
A high-end property worth US$300 million under Wang Chin She-ying’s name in suburban Los Angeles will be one of the first targets in recovering the money.
Hung said that although the bank only told Wang Chin She-ying to repay more than US$24 million this time, the actual debts owned by the Rebar Group are far greater than that.
Nine other cases demanding loan repayments by Rebar are still being handled in Taiwanese lawsuits, court trials or auctions.
Mega Bank, the Rebar Group’s largest creditor, filed suit in the Los Angeles court on Feb. 5 last year, initially hoping to recover US$210 million, but later adjusted the figure after reassessing their strategy, bank officials have said.
They said they decided to collect part of the debt in the first stage of the legal process and would seek to collect the full amount later.
The Rebar scandal came to light in January last year after the group’s China Rebar Co (中國力霸) and Chia Hsin Food and Synthetic Fiber Co (嘉新食品化纖) applied for insolvency restructuring, triggering a run on the Chinese Bank (中華銀行), another Rebar affiliate.
Taiwanese authorities placed Wang Chin She-ying and her husband on the country’s most-wanted list in January last year and have been seeking US assistance to have them repatriated to Taiwan to face charges.
In March that year, Taiwanese prosecutors indicted Wang You-theng and 106 others involved in the Rebar Group scandal on a long list of charges, including fraud, money laundering and insider trading. They are seeking a prison sentence of 30 years and an unprecedented fine of NT$1.71 billion for Wang You-theng.
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