Late Hong Kong star Anita Mui’s mother faces second bankruptcy over asset liquidation call

The mother of late Cantopop diva Anita Mui Yim-fong is facing the prospect of being declared bankrupt for a second time after Hong Kong’s justice minister applied to a court to have the centenarian’s assets liquidated.

Tam Mei-kam, who turned 100 earlier this year, was named the debtor in a High Court bankruptcy petition listed on the court’s cause book on Tuesday. It was filed a day earlier on behalf of the secretary for justice.

The subject matter of the petition was not immediately clear as the filing was not open to public inspection.

A first hearing has been scheduled for December 17, the judiciary website shows.

Tam was first declared bankrupt in April 2012 for defaulting on a payment of HK$2.24 million (US$288,400) to her lawyers after losing a high-profile legal battle over the late singer’s estate. That order was automatically discharged four years later.

The elderly woman had been wholly dependent financially on Mui, who died of cervical cancer in 2003 at the age of 40.