My name is Lin Chen. I am a Chartered Financial Advisor. I hold a Bachelor of Commerce and a Master of Business Administration from the National Taiwan University. I started working at Silverman Sachs in 1975, a foreign financial company in Hong Kong. My current title is Vice President. My job is to provide clients with financial planning, investment strategies, overseas investment opportunities, and tax minimisation schemes. I know my client Mr. Luo for many years.  In or about 2005. Mr. Luo and Mrs. Luo came to see me about drafting a prenuptial agreement before they got married. I told them that they should go to see a lawyer, but Mr. Luo was a major shareholder of a listed company, and he was afraid that this news would affect the stock price, so he was not willing to let the outside world know. Besides, they wanted me to write it in Chinese and asked me to be the witness.


I was studying some law courses at night, so I had some understanding of prenuptial agreements. I explained to them that other than separation agreements, Hong Kong has no legislation governing marriage agreements such as prenuptial agreements and postnuptial agreements, and the courts do not consider such agreements to be legally binding. However, in the case of divorce, if the court is required to deal with matters relating to spouse and children maintenance and property settlement under section 7(1) of the Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Ordinance, the court will consider on “a case-by-case basis” and also the "behaviour" of both parties. The content of marriage agreements (other than separation agreements) may then be considered, and the court may adopt some or all the content of it. The principle of fairness will be an important consideration when the court decides whether to follow the marriage agreement or not. At that time, Mr. and Mrs. Luo even listed out their assets in the statement of assets and liabilities to be attached to the pre-nuptial agreement, but after hearing what I said, they changed their mind and did not sign the agreement.


Since then, Mr. Luo earned a lot of money in business, so with the assistance of Mr. Luo's accountants, we have set up various frameworks of investment for him, including unit trusts which Mr. Luo is the beneficiary controlling millions of dollars under the umbrella of each trust unit, discretionary trusts which Mr. Luo is the trustee and has discretion to decide who to allocate, when to allocate and how to allocate, and family trusts with money held in the name of Luo family. But being the settlor, Mr. Luo has full power to decide which family member can enjoy the annuities. These legal structures are registered in the British Virgin Islands, so it is difficult to be found out. In addition, Mr. Luo also purchased a lot of stocks, stock warrants and other financial derivatives in Hong Kong, the United States and Taiwan. After Mr. Luo and Mrs. Luo had migrated to Australia, our company continued to manage these assets for them. We always assumed that Mrs. Luo knew about these assets all the way, but later learned that Mr. Luo did not disclose these assets when they divorced. We came over to give oral evidence in response to the summons issued by the Family Court and served by Hong Kong courts.