The husband of a former Miss Hong Kong runner-up has been cleared of assault and criminal intimidation charges after a court rejected her contradictory evidence.
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Eastern Court on Tuesday ruled that Vivian Lee Ming-wai’s allegations about being choked and threatened at knifepoint by businessman Johnson Chan at their home were contradicted by other contemporaneous records, including a signed police statement in which the complainant acknowledged that nobody was injured in the incident.
The court also could not rule out the possibility that Chan and Lee both used similar levels of force during the heated dispute.
Lee, 49, came second in the 1997 Miss Hong Kong competition, and Chan is vice-chairman of the Bonds Group of Companies, a local developer founded by his father and late entrepreneur Chan Shu-kui, according to the firm’s website.
It describes the 58-year-old defendant as “a successful movie producer” with “an incredible amount of international investment and management experience”.
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The pair married in 2003, but Lee revealed during the trial that they had filed for divorce and were living separately.
The court heard the couple had an altercation over parenting matters at their luxurious house on Stanley Village Road in southern Hong Kong on January 21.