The Elusive Mr King Part IX – Family Connections

Over the last four years or so, I’ve written an occasional series talking about a Chinese businessman named Wang Yaohui, who despite having no official position within BCFC or BSH seems to exert enormous amounts of control over both. If you’ve not read these before or want to refresh your memory about him you can read the previous articles in the series by tapping this link.

In this article I want to look at Wang Yaohui’s family, and how they are interconnected with the ownership of Birmingham City

Queena Tang Yuhong

In Monday’s article I briefly mentioned the business interests operated in London by the Wang Yaohui’s partner. I’ve briefly mentioned her before, but I think now is a good time to look into just how deeply she is immersed in the ownership of the club herself.

Formerly an actress in Chinese cinema, Queena Tang Yuhong now lives in London with Wang and their two children. Not much is known of her day-to-day life but from the little I do know she is a dedicated follower of fashion, attending fashion weeks in Paris and London regularly.

However, it would be wrong to think of Tang as merely Wang’s trophy wife.

With Wang Yaohui unwilling or unable to put his name to his businesses, it falls to his friends and family to take up the reins.

The business card shown above is from a company called WT Capital Group Ltd, who despite the addresses on the card are based at a serviced office address in London.

A search of Companies House shows that this company lists Tang Yuhong as the sole director and owner.

On Monday I mentioned a small company called Lunar Artefacts who make a very stylised version of a mouse and charging unit. Companies House lists WT Capital Group as their owner, and Tang Yuhong as a company director. That filing interestingly gives 33 Cavendish Square as a service address, which is also the listed address for another King-related UK business, UK Wealth Holdings Development.

Of the addresses on the business card, the Hong Kong one might jump out to regular readers of this blog.

Back in 2018 I visited that specific office in Jardine House as part of my investigations into Wang Yaohui. It’s no surprise that office is listed as the Hong Kong address for WT Capital.

I’ve redacted the Singapore address as it’s a residential one; but having taken a look at the building in question I can confirm it’s pretty swish – as I’d expect for both Wang Yaohui and his family.

The final address is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and rather unsurprisingly it’s the address for the lot of land now known as One Park. One Park is owned by a guy called Vong Pech, who is the largest official individual shareholder in Birmingham City FC, owning stakes both directly via Oriental Rainbow Investments, and indirectly via his shareholding in Birmingham Sports Holdings.

What’s interesting is that Tang also lists a web address – www.gred.com.kh.

This website is no longer operating but thanks to the Internet Archive we can see what used to be at that web address.

As you can see from this link, the website used to be the website for Graticity Real Estate Development, the developers of One Park and owners of a 23.53% stake in BSH.

So why is Wang Yaohui’s partner handing out business cards with details of a business owned and operated by Vong Pech?

Cambodia

Getting details out of Cambodia is very difficult as very little is posted online in the first place, and my knowledge of Khmer is even less than that of Mandarin Chinese.

However, thanks to contacts I’ve built up in the capital Phnom Penh I can now shed a bit more light on the connections between Wang Yaohui and Vong Pech.

I’ve long known that Wang Yaohui has had business interests in Cambodia, but it’s difficult to link him directly with citable info. Multiple sources have confirmed to me that Wang Yaohui has a Cambodian diplomatic passport in the name of Wan Sokha, but I have yet to find anything confirming that Wang has taken that name there.

However, in the past few weeks I have located and can share confirmation that Wang Yaohui has a naturalisation certificate which confirms he has Cambodian citizenship. This can be viewed at this link.

This isn’t particularly hard to achieve with the right investment but it’s nice to have proof that Wang is indeed entitled to a Cambodian passport.

Vong Pech is also in possession of a Cambodian passport, as one would expect for someone who is known to be a Cambodian businessman.

One thing which is interesting is that according to his passport, Vong Pech was born in China rather than Cambodia. This then raises the question of whether Vong Pech, like Wang Yaohui is also a Chinese national naturalised as a Cambodian – and if Vong Pech is even the name he was born with.

Since 1997, it has been the law that every Khmer family living in Cambodia has to have a “family book”. Not having one means a Cambodian cannot get a national ID card, and ownership of a family book is strictly limited to Cambodian nationals.

As a Cambodian national, one would expect Vong Pech to have a family book and thanks to sources I have developed in Phnom Penh, I have a copy of Vong Pech’s family book available to view at this link.

While my Khmer is non-existent, I’m led to believe that the date of June 11, 2015 written on the third page is the date that Vong Pech became a Cambodian national. This only adds to the question of just where and with what name Vong Pech was born.

As I’ve mentioned before, Vong Pech is known to us for his dealings in Cambodian land. Hong Kong Stock Exchange listings have informed us about his investments both in Graticity Real Estate Development and CESIZ (Cambodia) Ltd.

However in addition to that I’ve recently obtained information of other land owned by Vong Pech.

You can see a valuation report at this link for a plot of land adjacent to One Park which has been independently valued at just under half a billion US dollars – which I’m sure we can all agree is a lot of money.

This is where the tale gets both murky and unverifiable.

I’ve yet to establish this with verifiable information that I can share with you, but multiple sources in both Cambodia and elsewhere have confirmed to me that my thoughts that Vong Pech wasn’t his birth name were correct, and that he was born in China as Wang Dong (王东).

Those same sources have also indicated that there is a direct family connection between Wang Yaohui and Vong Pech, with Vong Pech either being the nephew or cousin of Wang Yaohui.

The story further goes that the above valuation report was obtained as Vong Pech needed to raise some cash to pay off some gambling debts owed by Wang Yaohui in Cambodia. The exact size of those debts is unclear but bearing in mind the land above was apparently handed over in lieu of cash I think it’s safe to say that would have been very substantial.

If the above is true, then there could be massive implications for both BSH and BCFC.

As Vong Pech is a large shareholder in BSH he would have had to made a declaration of his identity when disclosing substantial share transactions.

Likewise, the owners and directors test which is used to certify if an owner or director is a “fit and proper” person relies on submissions of documents.

If Vong Pech has not disclosed any other names he may have when submitting documents either to the HKSE or the EFL, then there are serious questions over the validity of those submissions.

All attempts I have made to try to engage with Vong Pech to verify or refute this information have been met with complete silence; I can’t even confirm I have the correct email addresses currently.

As Vong Pech currently owns a shade under 40% of the club and 25% of St Andrew’s stadum, I’d like to see something confirming who he is and what his intentions are – if only to refute everything I’ve mentioned above.