Man who hid wealth ordered to add $10m to asset pool with ex-wife

Judge raises woman's share of assets, signals court's 'utter contempt' of man's actions

- Theresa Tan

A judge ordered a man to include about $10 million of his wealth in the matrimonial pool of assets to be divided in his divorce, to signal the court's "utter contempt" at how the man tried to hide his wealth from his former wife.

Judicial Commissioner Mohamed Faizal Mohamed Abdul Kadir said the man's actions were among the most brazen attempts to conceal one's assets in divorce cases the courts have seen.

"It represents a fraud not just on the court, but on all of the parties involved in the litigation and the wider justice system," he said in a judgment released on Jan 9.

He also awarded the man's former wife 69 per cent of the matrimonial assets of about $10.2 million - which was more than the 50 per cent she had asked for.

Before the sum of about $10 million was added, the couple's matrimonial assets amounted to only slightly over $100,000.

In the end, the woman was awarded about $7 million of the assets, leaving the man with about $3.1 million.

The judge said that the 39-year-old man "indisputably possesses" millions of dollars in assets, but he painted an "utterly unbelievable picture of a net financial worth of just tens of thousands of dollars".

In the judgment, the judicial commissioner said: "The husband has hidden almost the entirety of his assets over the years from view in order to do his best to shoehorn the court from being able to sensibly dispense justice, coming up with a myriad of excuses for why no objective evidence of their value is available, and why, therefore, he should be allowed to declare all of these varied assets to be worthless.

"The response by the court must reflect the utter contempt that it has for such behaviour."

The couple at the centre of the case are a 38-year-old Malaysian woman and her Australian husband. They have a six-year-old child, whose gender was not stated in the judgment.