Bruno Wang asked a BVI court to install provisional liquidators over a fund he said he owned. The court threw the orders out, found he had breached his duty of full and frank disclosure in a non-innocent way, and refused to grant them again. A year later, a higher court gave him back the right to try.
A two-stage play
In 2021, a man described in court papers as an “alleged beneficial owner” of shares in a British Virgin Islands fund asked the BVI Commercial Court for help. Mr Chia Hsing Wang, also known as Bruno Wang, wanted receivers appointed over shares in Real Assets (RA) Global Opportunity Fund I Limited, known as RAGOF. The receivers, once installed, would then ask the court for the next thing: joint provisional liquidators over the fund itself.
The court records describe this as a “two-staged approach to replacing the management of RAGOF.” Bruno Wang is the eldest son of Andrew Wang, the late arms broker at the center of the Lafayette frigate scandal, and he remains, according to an OCCRP investigation, on Taiwan’s wanted list. He has strongly denied wrongdoing and said the family’s wealth is not illicit. None of the Wangs have been convicted.
What the BVI court found
On 19 August 2022, Justice Wallbank of the BVI Commercial Court discharged both orders: the receivership order and the order appointing provisional liquidators. He dismissed the application to continue them and declined to re-grant either.
The reason mattered. According to a Blackstone Chambers case note, “both Orders were obtained by Mr Wang by non-innocent breaches of the duty of full and frank disclosure and fair presentation on ex parte applications.” Forbes Hare, the firm that acted for the successful respondents, records that the court found the breaches to be “not innocent” and “very serious.”
The detail was unflattering. The Court of Appeal later noted that the ex parte application for provisional liquidators landed on the judge with a core bundle of 136 pages, an exhibit bundle of 4,000 pages, a skeleton argument of 45 pages and an authorities bundle of 376 pages, filed less than 24 hours before the hearing. The hearing lasted 27 minutes, even though the court had indicated that three and a half hours were available. The applicant’s counsel, the Court of Appeal observed, had over-stated the position.
The court also found that the strategy was designed to present the court with a fait accompli. The orders were discharged, and they were not re-granted.
The Court of Appeal confirms
Bruno Wang appealed. On 6 June 2023, the Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court dismissed the combined appeals against the discharge.
The appellate court’s language was firm. It found that the BVI Commercial Court’s conclusion, that the court “had been led to make the ex parte Receivership and PL Orders on an erroneous basis as a result of non-innocent and material breaches of the duty of full and frank disclosure,” was “unassailable.” It held that “these breaches were sufficiently material and serious as to warrant the discharge of both the Receivership Order and the PL Order.”
The court also rejected three attempts by Mr Wang’s side to adduce fresh evidence under the Ladd v Marshall principles, cautioning that an appeal from an interlocutory decision is not an invitation to re-hear the application on new evidence.
The second act: standing, and a partial win
This is where the story turns, and any fair account has to follow it. On 20 June 2023, two weeks after the Court of Appeal’s judgment, Mr Wang filed a second application for the appointment of joint provisional liquidators over RAGOF.
On 20 July 2023, Wallbank J granted that second application on the question of standing. He found that Mr Wang had standing to maintain the winding-up application derivatively on behalf of XYZ, the registered shareholder. Floreat Real Estate Limited, the respondent, appealed.
On 25 April 2024, the Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court dismissed Floreat’s appeal. The holding, as recorded, was that the appeal was dismissed, with costs to Mr Wang. On the standing question, Bruno Wang won, and the costs of that appeal were awarded in his favor. An Appleby case note describes the judgment as reinforcing the protection available to beneficial owners of BVI companies.
It was a partial win, not a vindication of the first round. The first orders remain discharged for non-innocent non-disclosure. The second application let him back through the door on a narrower point.
What remains open
Two judgments, two outcomes, one fund. In the first, the court found that Bruno Wang obtained urgent orders without telling the court what it needed to hear, and refused to give him those orders again. In the second, a higher court said he could still pursue the winding-up, and made the other side pay.
The gap between the two is the part the public record does not close. The non-innocent breach finding stands. The standing finding stands. Neither wipes the other out.
So the question that the file leaves open is the one that matters most: when a court discharges your orders for non-innocent non-disclosure, but a higher court still lets you pursue the winding-up, what exactly has been vindicated? The applicant’s conduct, or only his right to be heard?
The judgments do not answer that. They leave it to the reader.