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Macau gaming tycoon at war with sprawling family
By Peter Brieger (AFP) – 2 hours ago
HONG KONG — Stanley Ho, the ailing 89-year-old tycoon who turned the sleepy village of Macau into Asia's gambling capital, was locked Tuesday in a war of words with his huge family over his $3 billion fortune.
Ho's lawyer reportedly said the casino magnate's family, comprising at least 17 children born to four wives, had "fraudulently misappropriated" his flagship company and that he was "hopping mad".
But members of the family hit back, insisting that Ho was fully aware of an agreement to divide SJM Holdings up among his sprawling clan and threatening legal action against his lawyers.
The colourful Ho, once a keen ballroom dancer known for his playboy lifestyle, was hospitalised in mid-2009 for unspecified reasons. Reports said he fell at home and suffered a brain injury.
He has rarely been seen in public since, raising questions about the future of SJM and other businesses, a fortune reportedly worth $3.1 billion that once sparked a bitter legal feud between Ho and his estranged sister Winnie.
Those questions seemed to have been laid to rest on Monday when, in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange, Ho said he had offloaded the lion's share of his Macau casino company, primarily to his children with his second wife.
But Ho's lawyer, quoted in the South China Morning Post and The Wall Street Journal, accused relatives of hijacking the casino empire built up by the family patriarch over four decades.
"Stanley Ho is of the opinion that this was fraudulently misappropriated by members of his family and we have been instructed to vigorously pursue and protect his interests and pursue those who are involved in this," Gordon Oldham, a partner in law firm Oldham, Li & Nie, told the Post.
"To say that he is hopping mad about this whole incident is an understatement."
However, Ho's relatives denied Tuesday that the share transfer was done without the tycoon's approval, and released a letter from his adult daughter Daisy in which Ho appeared to confirm the deal.
All the transactions "were approved or authorised in writing by Dr Stanley Ho", said a statement from the relatives' holding company, Lanceford.
"It is regrettable that Oldham, Li & Nie rushed to publicise these matters without checking the underlying facts in connection with the relevant transactions, and we reserve our rights against that firm," it added.
Hong Kong-listed SJM shares were suspended from trading Tuesday before markets opened pending the release of "price-sensitive information".
On Monday, after the share transfer announcement, SJM shares closed down about four percent at HK$13.80 ($1.77).
Oldham, who did not immediately respond to AFP's requests for comment, acknowledged that the increasingly frail Ho may have signed the transfer documents.
"Obviously he signed something, but it wasn't explained what the effect of that would be," he told the Post. "Certainly he would never sign what this purports to be."
The tycoon has long been dogged by controversy, making his first fortune smuggling luxury goods across the Chinese border from Macau -- then a Portuguese colony -- during World War II when it was occupied by Japan.
Later, Ho repeatedly denied persistent allegations that he was linked to the city's notorious triad crime groups.
Macau returned to Chinese rule in 1999, and is the only city in China that allows casino gambling. It raked in $23.5 billion in gaming revenues last year, four times as much as the Las Vegas Strip.
Ho enjoyed a monopoly on Macau casinos from the 1960s to 2002, when the territory's government granted licenses to other companies including some of the big Vegas players.
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