The case of property tycoon Nina Wang, accused of causing miscarriage of justice by forging her late husband's will in a long legal battle over his estate, will now be heard on April 22.

Renewing Wang's HK$55-million bail yesterday, the Eastern Magistrates' Courts said the case had been deferred to consider transferring it to the High Court.

Wang, in a black-and-white dress, reached the court in the morning for a brief appearance. She faces charges for forgery, using a false instrument and perverting the course of public justice.

Wang was arrested in January after the Court of Appeal, in a separate civil hearing last year, ruled that a will dated March 12, 1990, furnished by Wang to claim her husband's huge fortune, had been forged. She has moved the Court of Final Appeal against the ruling, and her case will be heard on July 11.

Forbes magazine last year named the property developer Chinacem chairwoman the richest woman in Hong Kong, with a personal worth of about HK$18 billion (US$2.3 billion).

Wang's husband Teddy Wang was kidnapped on April 10, 1990, and never returned, after which she took control of his company and built it into a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate.

According to prosecution, Teddy Wang had made two wills - one in 1960 and another in 1968. In the second will, he sought to revoke the earlier one, bequeathing his entire estate to his father. In 1997, Teddy Wang's father Wang Din-shin sought probate of the estate on the basis of the 1968 will. The next year, Nina Wang produced a will dated March 12, 1990, in the High Court and claimed it was Teddy Wang's latest will that named her as the sole beneficiary of his estate.

The first charge against Nina Wang says that in connivance with others, she prepared the 1990 will between April 1997 and January 1998 to induce people to accept it as genuine. The second charge accuses her of using the document on or about January 16, 1998, to get others to accept it as genuine.

She has also been accused of perverting the course of public justice by producing a "fake" will and mounting a defence in the court on its basis.

(HK Edition 03/24/2005 page2)