source : the age
For the past five years, John Changjin Li has lived at one of the most expensive residences in Australia, set on the Point Piper waterfront and with one of the few private tennis courts on Sydney Harbour. But as of Monday, he no longer owns it.
The NSW Supreme Court has revoked the Chinese goldmining businessman’s hold on the $95 million property and reinstated his estranged wife Maria Meihong Yang on corporate records as the ultimate owner of landmark residence Edgewater.
But Maria’s victory to claim sole ownership of the $95 million property might be short-lived, given that a third party is seeking almost half of it.
Legal financing company MHN Asset Management is suing Maria for 45 per cent of her share of the waterfront residence, claiming she agreed to sign it over in exchange for funding her fight to reclaim the property.
The tussle over Edgewater centres on its holding company, Point Piper One Pty Ltd, which was the subject of recent orders by Justice David Hammerschlag, who reinstated Maria as the owner of its 100 shares, and cancelled an unauthorised and complex share structure that diluted her share interest in John’s favour.
The updated Australian Securities and Investments Commission register on Monday showed that John and his 23-year-old daughter Rose Zhirou Li remain directors, and the company’s registered office remains John’s Point Piper home address, set on Australia’s most expensive street, Wolseley Road.
The orders were issued as part of an ongoing legal stoush between Maria and MHN, one of half a dozen legal proceedings making its way through various courts that have unveiled the complex marital arrangements behind John’s property empire.
Further souring Maria’s win is the fact that the property could end up costing its owner more than its $95 million purchase price of six years ago. There are seven mortgages on title to a slew of private creditors, and a potential land tax bill of almost $26 million owed to Revenue NSW.
John’s woes are not limited to his Sydney address. He and his former wife, Athena Changren Cheng, own a gold mine in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan region that has been sealed by the authorities since 2021.
Athena, too, is facing complications in China, despite her prominence as chair of mining, real estate and biotechnology conglomerate Jinluan International Group. Soon after she moved to Australia in 2019, she was listed as a dishonest debtor by the Chinese authorities and slugged with consumption restriction orders aimed at limiting any high-value spending to enforce a debt recovery.
The imbroglio over Edgewater goes back to 2020, when John purchased the Point Piper mansion that boasts a private jetty and iconic views of the Harbour Bridge as his and Maria’s matrimonial home. It was to be held in the name of Point Piper One Pty Ltd, and Maria was to be the owner.
The $95 million sale ranked as Australia’s second-highest house price sale at that time.
News of the purchase took Maria by surprise. As she later told the court, the then-couple had talked about buying the property, but she learnt that it happened only when she read about it in this masthead.
The couple’s marriage was an even bigger surprise for John’s former wife Athena, his daughter Rose, and their friends and family in Australia: none of whom were told that John and Maria had married until the legal fight over the property made its way to court a few years later.
In evidence to the Supreme Court last year, Athena said that while she was unaware at the time that Maria and John were married, she did understand that Maria was meant to be the shareholder of the company because neither she nor John had Australian citizenship.
Despite such a grandiose start to John and Maria’s marriage, by mid-2022 the relationship was on the rocks.
Things didn’t improve a few weeks later when Maria discovered John was living at Edgewater with Athena, albeit in separate rooms, while Maria was left with her $1.3 million unit in Zetland. The estranged couple haven’t lived together since.
What’s more, court records show Maria later discovered her shareholding in Point Piper One Pty Ltd had been changed without her consent and replaced by a complex share structure involving A- and C-class shares across three interrelated companies that diluted her interest.
At the time there was also a mortgage on the title of more than $30 million from Athena’s investment company, Athena Rose Capital.
A month after Point Piper One Pty Ltd was restructured in John’s favour, the company settled on the first half of the $95 million purchase. The second half settled late last year.
In a bid to finance her legal fight to reclaim the property, Maria turned to litigation funder MHN, headed by Ruize Yan. As part of the funding agreement, MHN claimed Maria promised to assign 30 per cent of Point Piper One Pty Ltd to MHN.
When Athena called in her debt on the Point Piper property, Federal Court proceedings ensued, forcing Maria to turn again to MHN for additional funding to fight the claim. In return, the litigation funding increased to 45 of Maria’s 100 shares in Point Piper One Pty Ltd.
MHN, and Maria, won those proceedings, and in 2023, her shareholding in Point Piper One was reinstated.
But when MHN demanded she transfer the 45 shares, she never did so.
Instead, a Supreme Court judgment last year states that Maria agreed to transfer her shares in Point Piper One to John for a total of $1 million, but she never executed the share transfer, and she was never paid the $1 million.
Corporate records show that within two days of MHN’s demand for its shares, John had notified the corporate regulator that Maria had forfeited her shares, and the complex A- and C-class share structure was reinstated, again.
MHN and Maria have been embroiled in legal proceedings over the company share structure since, and freeze orders have been issued over Maria’s Zetland apartment, given claims of outstanding legal fees of almost $940,000.
In the fallout of Maria and John’s estrangement – the couple remain married – three of John’s property investment companies have been placed into liquidation, and are the subject of a liquidator examination currently in the Federal Court over claims of millions of dollars in outstanding capital gains tax and questions over the validity of a slew of loans owing to Athena’s investment company.
One of those companies, One Lake Macquarie Pty Ltd, owns a waterfront estate on Lake Macquarie, known as Mandalay, which set a $6 million record for the suburb of Eraring when it was purchased in 2020. Another house nearby was purchased the following year for $3.1 million.
The two properties were originally owned by Maria by way of her shares in the company, but controlled by John and allegedly laden with debts owing to Athena.
The properties were put up for auction in 2023 by the liquidators in a bid to recoup outstanding capital gains and land tax debts, and the mortgagee was Athena Rose Capital.
In a surprising twist on the day of the auction, Athena’s nephew Robin Ruobin Hua, a former director of the company, was in attendance to buy the property.
A few hours later, Robin did just that, exchanging $6.5 million for both properties, and despite later admitting in the liquidator examination that he did not know how he was going to pay for it, he did reject suggestions that he was buying Mandalay for his aunt Athena or her former husband, John.
However, that sale to Robin has since stalled, after an injunction was issued whereby the proceeds of the sale were ordered to be held in escrow, rather than dispersed to Athena’s finance company, until the liquidators could clarify the validity of the mortgagee’s rights to the proceeds.
That sale has never been completed and is subject to an ongoing liquidator examination.
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