By Brian Wong

Copyright scmp

The husband of a former Miss Hong Kong runner-up has been cleared of assault and criminal intimidation charges after a court rejected her contradictory evidence.
Eastern Court on Tuesday ruled that Vivian Lee Ming-wai’s allegations about being choked and threatened at knifepoint by businessman Johnson Chan at their home were contradicted by other contemporaneous records, including a signed police statement in which the complainant acknowledged that nobody was injured in the incident.
The court also could not rule out the possibility that Chan and Lee both used similar levels of force during the heated dispute.
Lee, 49, came second in the 1997 Miss Hong Kong competition, and Chan is vice-chairman of the Bonds Group of Companies, a local developer founded by his father and late entrepreneur Chan Shu-kui, according to the firm’s website.
It describes the 58-year-old defendant as “a successful movie producer” with “an incredible amount of international investment and management experience”.
The pair married in 2003, but Lee revealed during the trial that they had filed for divorce and were living separately.
The court heard the couple had an altercation over parenting matters at their luxurious house on Stanley Village Road in southern Hong Kong on January 21.
Lee alleged her husband brandished a 20cm Swiss Army knife and grappled with her during the argument, leaving her with bruises on her neck and left arm. The defendant was also said to have threatened to kill his wife.
But in a subsequent police investigation, Lee signed a police notebook confirming no injury resulted from the altercation and that she would not pursue the matter further.
She filed a formal police report the next day after Chan reportedly threw her out of the house and barred her from collecting her belongings.
The witness insisted in court that she did not truly understand the police statement written in Chinese, even though she was careful enough to consult others over the phone before signing it.

At the close of the prosecution’s case, Magistrate Kestrel Lam Tsz-hong dismissed the intimidation charge after finding the evidence was too weak to support a conviction.
The magistrate found a case to answer against Chan on the assault charge, but concluded it was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Lam explained on Tuesday that Lee’s evidence was inconsistent with that of the family’s domestic helper, who said she did not see any knife nor hear any verbal threats by the accused.
He also found it incredible that Lee did not make her complaints to police at the first instance, while suggesting her injuries could have been caused during a struggle in which her husband might have also sustained minor injuries.
“Although the defendant’s acts may prima facie look like an assault, in the context and background of a heated dispute between the defendant and [the prosecution witness], I cannot safely say that the defendant’s acts cannot be described as part of a struggle between the two,” the magistrate said.