George Tan Soon-gin, ex-chairman of the Carrian Group, took over the company in 1979 and built it into a billion-dollar empire in just 2 years.
Carrian Investments went bankrupt in 1983 after it couldn't repay its $1 billion in debt after a downtown in Hong Kong's property market.
In the aftermath of the bankruptcy, a Malaysian businessman murdered an auditor who was investigating Carrian's shoddy lending. During his trial, he accused Tan of ordering the killing.
A year later, Tan's lawyers successfully "outmaneuvered" government prosecutors to get him acquitted on fraud charges and free on bail, The Wall Street Journal reported.
When Carrian dissolved, it had debts of $1.3 billion — the greatest-ever bankruptcy in Hong Kong.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, United Press International