A photo, widely used online, purportedly of Lai (right) and his father. The younger man was found dead after falling off a building in Taichung's Beitun district. -
TAIPEI (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): Prosecutors in Taiwan have closed investigations into the death of the Taiwanese teenager dubbed the “$500 million high schooler” by local media after his perplexing death two hours after he was legally married in May.
The 18-year-old, identified by his surname Lai, had fallen to his death from a flat on the 10th floor in Taichung, on May 4.
The flat in the central Taiwan city was the residence of a man identified only by the surname Hsia, an escrow agent with whom Lai had just registered their marriage hours earlier.
At a press conference after the death, Lai’s mother said her son had inherited a property portfolio worth around NT$500 million (S$21.7 million) and accused Hsia of murdering him to lay a claim to the hefty real estate portfolio.
After more than a month’s worth of investigations, Taichung’s district prosecutors on Wednesday said multi-agency investigations yielded insufficient evidence that Hsia or his father, also an escrow agent who was reportedly managing the Lai family’s portfolio, were involved in the teenager’s death.
Instead, Hsia will be charged with forging the documents that legalised his marriage to Lai.
Prosecutors suspect he proposed a scam marriage while having designs over Lai’s inheritance, Taiwanese daily China Times reported, citing the contents of the indictment report.
Hsia was previously suspected of homicide but was released from detention on a bail of NT$300,000.
Prosecutors said last week a comprehensive autopsy determined that evidence including injuries found on Lai’s body showed there was no foulplay that led to his fall. On Wednesday, they added that the high school student was “emotionally distressed” before his death.
According to China Times, prosecutors wrote in their indictment report that they found Mr Lai had confided in Hsia and expressed uncertainty over managing the properties he inherited. Feeling pressured by his biological father’s first wife and their children, who he said made a scene at his father’s funeral, he agreed to the same-sex marriage with Hsia.
Local media has cast doubt on the same-sex marriage, legal in Taiwan, citing witnesses including Lai’s former teachers who said he had sought counselling over his unrequited feelings for a female classmate. His mother also denied he was gay.
Hsia is suspected of seeking marriage witnesses who were neither friend nor kin to himself and Lai, while also falsifying statements that indicated both their parents were aware of the marriage.
If the marriage is determined to be a sham, Hsia will lose his claim to Lai’s inheritance, which he may have asserted his right to as a legally wedded partner.
Hsia was searching randomly for the two required witnesses for their marriage, Taichung prosecutors said, leaving the authorities to question his intentions. Examinations of their phone records also yielded the conclusion that the two had minimal contact before their marriage.
Taiwanese media cited people in a convenience store near the Beitun district household registration office where the marriage was solemnised saying Hsia approached them for help, claiming their families opposed the union.
Hsia had told investigators that by registering their marriage, he was helping Lai to access the inheritance passed on by his father, local media reported, as the patriarch of the Lai family had declared he would hand over his portfolio to the first of his sons to tie the knot.
Speaking to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, Michael Hsu, the lawyer hired by Lai’s mother, identified by media as Chen, said she “regretted” the prosecutors’ decision not to press charges for homicide, citing the need to claim justice for her son.
The matter of the Lai family’s inheritance remains up in the air.
The claims Chen may lay to the real estate portfolio may reportedly be curtailed by her Chinese nationality, with some Taiwanese lawyers speculating she may only be entitled to NT$2 million of the portfolio that comprises more than 30 pieces of property.
The intriguing background of Lai’s family has also been scrutinised by local media, notably his biological ties with his father, who was previously known as his grandfather in official documents.
Taiwan’s United Daily News reported that Lai’s mother had arrived in Taiwan in 2002 for an arranged marriage with a disabled man. After the man’s death, she bore a child with her father-in-law, a boy who would grow up to be the 18-year-old Lai.
The father-in-law later legally “adopted” his biological son to facilitate his property inheritance.
