24 February, 2017
Is Charles C. Spackman, a prominent Harvard alumnus and donor and alleged “Hong Kong technology tycoon,” hiding assets to avoid paying a legal judgment?
The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Tuesday ordered the President and Fellows of Harvard College and Claire Spackman, a student at Harvard, to turn over financial records and testify regarding assets belonging to Charles Spackman following Kobre & Kim’s application for an order to take discovery from them.
According to legal papers filed by Kobre & Kim in U.S. federal court, Spackman founded a publicly traded company in Korea, Littauer Technologies, that had a onetime estimated worth of billions. But in 2000, this vanished virtually overnight after a transaction, allegedly perpetrated by Spackman, whereby Littauer purchased a “paper company” worth approximately US $2.1 million, also controlled by Spackman, for a jaw-dropping US $1.3 billion in company shares. The transaction allegedly enriched Spackman to the tune of US $100 million, while Littauer stock plummeted and investors suffered billions in losses. A court later described the transaction as “an expedient financial scheme akin to fraudulent payment for shares.”
The alleged fraud resulted in investigations by Korean criminal authorities and actions in Korea, during which time Spackman “fled to Hong Kong,” in the words of a Korean court. He is alleged to have been living there ever since in an area that Forbes magazine recently described as “the wealthiest neighborhood on earth.”
Meanwhile, one Littauer investor, Korean businessman Sang Cheol Woo, has been fighting for more than a decade to recoup some of his losses.
In 2011, the Seoul High Court entered a judgment in the matter in favor of Woo, but Spackman has not yet paid a penny. The discovery application is part of the multijurisdictional enforcement campaign being undertaken by Kobre & Kim, a law firm focused on international judgment enforcement, in an effort to help Mr. Woo collect on his judgment.
