Hong Kong feng shui master loses battle for tycoon's fortune

Wang used feng shui in a fruitless bid to find her husband, Teddy, the founder of the sprawling Chinachem who was kidnapped in 1990 but whose body has never been found.

The probate case filled the front pages of Hong Kong's media for weeks after it first opened in May last year, with the court hearing from 36 witnesses.

The charity's lawyers accused Chan of being a charlatan who duped Wang, arguing that she did not have the mental capacity to execute the alleged will because of health problems.

The trial heard that Chan — who was married during his affair with Wang — held a slew of previous jobs, including bartender, machinery salesman, a waiter in a bakery chain and a market researcher.

Lam rejected Chan's testimony, saying he lied about the circumstances surrounding the 2006 will and was not a credible witness.

He acknowledged that Chan, 50, and Wang had had an affair, but rejected claims that she wanted him in charge of her sprawling property empire.

“As far as her estate was concerned, she placed a higher regard on her charitable objectives than (Chan).”

Shanghai-born Wang, the judge said, had wanted to keep the affair a secret.

“She wanted it buried together with her after her death,” he wrote.

The famously frugal billionaire, known for wearing pigtails and miniskirts, won a separate legal battle with her father-in-law for control of her late husband's estate just two years before her own death.

The charity was named after the business conglomerate Chinachem Group set up by her husband, who was declared legally dead in 1999 nine years after his kidnapping.

Wang's thrifty nature — she preferred cheap brands and fried chicken to designer clothes and five-star restaurants — was widely documented by Hong Kong's media, which nicknamed her “Little Sweetie” because of her resemblance to a Japanese comic character.

Unlike many residents in designer-obsessed and shopaholic Hong Kong, Wang rarely went to malls and had most of her clothes and handbags made by friends.

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