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“Two of the applicants in particular, William Lim and Cheng-Hsiung Huang, have and continue to suffer reputational harm due to recent, inaccurate reports in the Chinese and other media publications of developments (in) relation to this action,” the petition says. The judge must consider whether benefits of a closed hearing, including protecting the commercial interests of litigants, outweigh the public’s interest in open courts and free expression, the filing says.

Lim’s lawyer, Daniel Reid, said that Lim can’t comment on the case because it’s still before the courts. On Tuesday, lawyers for Huang and Liu didn’t immediately respond to Postmedia’s request for comment.

Case filings say that Huang, an investor in China, invested in NSB by using his company, YSY International Investments. Postmedia’s review of B.C. property documents shows that Huang, his wife and YSY International Investments own a total of $35.9 million in B.C. properties, including a number of farm plots in Richmond. Filings indicate several properties are linked to the restaurant business.

Last Thursday, NSB’s head chef, Xiao Yang Zhu, was scheduled to testify, before a late-night deal halted the trial. Zhu had alleged that he was cheated out of shares in NSB, and that in NSB’s operations Huang and Lim were involved in “systematic tax evasion (and) siphoning large quantities of undeclared cash out of the business daily.”

A Feb. 7 application from a number of NSB’s food suppliers sought to set aside solicitor-client privilege for Lim and the restaurant’s investors — and force them to produce documents. The application alleged that “prima facie” evidence shows Lim was involved in “unlawful conduct,” including “misappropriation and reinvestment of NSB cash as loans by owner to understate income, (thus) unlawfully reducing income tax, sales tax and as a fraud on creditors.”