HONG KONG: The close aide of fung shui proponent Tony Chan was accused of lying in testimony he gave yesterday in the Court of First Instance.

The accusation against the close aide, Raymond Chu, who has known Chan since 1992, was leveled by counsel for the Chinachem Charitable Foundation on the 37th day of the trial that will decide the heir to the multi-billion dollar estate of the late Nina Wang. Chu was under cross examination concerning the ownership of Offshore Group Holdings Limited (OGHL) and was being asked whether Chan is a fung shui expert.

Chu said he is aware that Chan's younger brother Bobby Chan is the director of OGHL, and the money for the company was put up by Tony Chan.

However, a document disclosed to the stock exchange named Bobby as the ultimate beneficial owner of OGHL, which owns shares in the company chaired by Chu, RCG.

Chinachem counsel Benjamin Yu asserted that Chu knows the source of the company's capital but that Tony Chan has given instructions to lie.

Justice Johnson Lam asked whether Chu had checked the accuracy of the document when he knew that the content was inconsistent with his knowledge.

Chu said he did not pay attention to where Tony Chan got the money.

"I am just dealing with the document," he said. "I cannot go behind the document."

On the matter of whether Chan is a fung shui expert, Chu, who gave up his job as a solicitor at HK$150,000 a month to work for Tony Chan for only HK$30,000 a month in 1999, said he never discussed fung shui with Chan.

He said Chan had read his face.

"That is more like fortune telling," Chu said.

Chan's property agency, Regal Properties, where Chu worked in 1999, published monthly magazines between June 1999 and July 2000. A gimmick of offering free fung shui service to customers was part of the promotional effort the business adopted. Yu challenged that Chu was lying because fung shui should be a natural matter for discussion between him and Chan. The two men are said to have met as often as twice a week during the 1990s.

But Chu said his understanding of fung shui was that the master would enter a residential or business premises with a compass to check for direction lines.

He added that he had talked about fung shui to Chan, but Chan had never talked about the subject to him.

He said Chan had not talked about the book "Celestial Atlas" given by his father. Chu said he never discussed digging fung shui holes for Nina Wang with Chan.

Meanwhile, the court also heard that Chu pocketed 2.84 million pounds sterling after selling shares of RCG to Wang in a placement exercise in March 2007.

Chu denied that the company launched the placement exercise because Wang expressed an investment interest.

The court will hear the evidence of Chinachem fung shui expert Szeto Fa-ching today, followed by Tony Chan's fung shui expert Joseph Yu.

(HK Edition 07/10/2009 page1)