Article content continued

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Laura Gerow, in reasons for judgment last week, did not find either party to be credible, said there should be an accounting between the parties, and each should bear their own legal costs.

The two Wangs are not related, according to court filings, but both come from Shandong.

Coquitlam businessman William Wang, who has lived in B.C. since 2001, returned to his home province in 2011 as a member of a B.C. trade delegation, according to court filings. While there, he met Anita Wang, head of a large food manufacturing company, and the two agreed to invest together in land in Metro Vancouver.

The judge did not accept Anita Wang’s claim that she entrusted her new business partner absolutely and, that as a “sophisticated” businesswoman, she “paid little if any attention to the documents.”

“The plaintiff’s story that she completely trusted the defendant even though she had just met him because he was from her home village — including testifying ‘that there is a saying in China that when you meet someone from your home village, tears come to your eyes’ — is totally incredible,” Gerow wrote in her judgment. “Particularly when the ‘home village’ has a population of nine million.”

The court heard evidence that after Anita Wang visited B.C. and returned to China in October 2011, she told her new partner “she was having trouble transferring her share of the funds.”

The judgment didn’t state the reason she had “trouble” moving the money, and her lawyers did not reply to emails asking that question.