Despite being one of the richest and most powerful couples in China with a combined net worth of US$1bil (SGD1.3bil), Chinese actress Vicki Zhao and her husband, billionaire tycoon Huang Youlong is not exempt from facing a myriad of very serious financial issues.
Hong Kong media broke the news on Monday (Jun 28) that Huang, 44 has found himself in deep legal trouble over a huge amount of money he borrowed a few years ago.
It was reported that Huang signed two loan agreements with JC International Finance Limited for a total of HK$150mil (SGD26mil) back in Aug and Oct 2016. Huang was supposed to return the full amount plus an additional HK$27mil (SGD4.7mil) in interest at the end of the loan period but he only repaid a portion of what he owed.
JC International Finance Limited later transferred their creditors’ rights to another company, Max Pointer Limited, whose repeated attempts to get Huang to pay them back all ended in vain, as reported by 8days.sg.
It was then unavoidable that they had to take Huang to court and file a claim for HK$298mil (SGD52mil) in principal and interest last Friday (Jun 25). This incident is just one of the latest in a string of money-related woes involving Huang, who is a Singapore citizen.
Back in 2019, Huang was sued by Michelle Chua, who is the wife of former ATV executive director James Shing over his HK$200mil (SGD34.6mil) debt to her.
At that same period of time, Huang reportedly splurged SGD27.65mil on a two-storey penthouse in Singapore, supposedly proving how unaffected he was by the saga. Another incident was when he and Zhao, 45 were banned from China’s stock market for five years after they were found to have “misled the market with fake information” while announcing their company’s takeover of Zhejiang Wanjia Co. in 2016.
An investigation conducted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission discovered that the couple had only prepared 60mil yuan (SGD12.5mil) of the 3bil yuan (SGD624mil) needed for the bid, with the remaining amount being borrowed from other firms.
As the news of Huang’s latest lawsuit came to light, netizens took the opportunity to leave all sorts of scathing comments, such as “If you owe money, you should pay it back” and “They have so many houses, just sell one of them and the problem will be solved”.
Some are also convinced that Zhao and Huang are no longer married, writing: “Aren’t these two rumoured to have broken up? So this doesn’t have anything to do with Vicki” and “Vicki divorced this person a long time ago, he has brought her so much misery”.
In 2008, Huang and Zhao tied the knot and they share a daughter, April who is aged 11. /TISG