Developer Helen Chan Sun is the sole shareholder of a company that holds title to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Lower Mainland real estate.
But the multimillionaire will spend the next 40 days in a jail cell after repeatedly ignoring B.C. Supreme Court orders to come clean with a creditor about her finances.
A frustrated judge ordered sheriffs to take the 49-year-old off to jail Friday to start serving a sentence for civil contempt he suspended last November in order to give Sun a last chance to comply with his orders to fully account for her income and expenditures.
But instead of meeting the very deadlines for avoiding incarceration that she had a hand in negotiating, Justice Richard Fowler said Sun appeared once again to have been less than forthcoming about her financial dealings, luxury cars and spa treatments.
“Her conduct throughout these proceedings has been nothing short of reprehensible,” Fowler said.
“Having failed to comply with the order I made … Ms. Sun must now begin serving that jail sentence. Ms. Sun you will now be taken into custody to serve 40 days of imprisonment for contempt of court.”
Led out in handcuffs
Sun sat in the first of two spectator rows in the small courtroom gallery as Fowler spoke. She spent much of the proceedings on her phone, but was paying full attention as the judge ordered her off to jail.
She stood, said goodbye to family and walked over to two sheriffs who ordered her to face the wall and place her hands behind her back as a sheriff handcuffed her.
The sheriffs then led Sun out of a silent courtroom.
The jail sentence comes as Sun’s real estate empire appears to be teetering on the brink of collapse, beset by receivership and bankruptcy proceedings.
Sun owns Landmark Premiere Properties Ltd., a company that, in turn, creates other corporations to buy and manage properties identified for future development.
She invested heavily in properties located along Vancouver’s once-red-hot Cambie Street corridor, a real estate market supercharged by the $6.5-billion redevelopment of the Oakridge site meant to house nearly 6,000 residents in 14 towers.
But condo prices slumped last year as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation warned that 2,500 new units were sitting unsold in Metro Vancouver — double the number for 2024.
Sun’s fortunes appeared to turn with the market.
In 2018, she declared her personal net worth at $94 million — a figure that had dropped to $21 million by 2023, according to a statement filed that year.
Now she’s facing two separate B.C. Supreme Court bankruptcy applications in relation to a 72-unit late 1960s era South Vancouver townhome complex she had hoped to transform into a booming development boasting two 30-storey-plus towers and 180 units of social housing.
A loan guarantee
The contempt proceedings date back to a $4.5 million mortgage GC Capital Inc. issued to a pair of companies in 2018 in relation to a failed real estate project in Burnaby.
Sun and another man guaranteed the loan, which meant that when the companies defaulted on the mortgage, GC Capital Inc. went after the guarantors.
In 2021, Sun reached a deal with GC Capital agreeing to pay $5.6 million in instalments. She paid approximately $3 million toward the debt, but stopped paying in the summer of 2022.
Two years later, the company obtained a judgment from a B.C. Supreme Court registrar ordering Sun to make monthly payments of $300,000 until the rest of the debt is paid off.
But she only made five payments of $3,000 in total, sparking the contempt application and — ultimately — Friday’s jail sentence.
In court proceedings, Sun has admitted that she believes the other guarantor should have to pay his half of the judgment.
‘I wish my garage looked like that’
In previous hearings, GC Capital’s lawyer, veteran litigator Ravi Hira, has pointed out Sun’s penchant for vacations and designer clothes.
On Friday, he told Fowler that Sun appeared to be using her companies to pay for expenses like $30,000 in spa treatments.
“There’s a Lamborghini SUV that I’ve learned about in addition to two or three BMWs and a Mercedes,” he told Fowler at one point.
“I wish my garage looked like that.”
In his submissions, Hira said that the information Sun has disclosed showed Landmark had paid for the purchase of her father’s unit in a White Rock condo complex that Sun is developing.
He said Landmark — that is essentially Sun — also pays mortgage payments on another Vancouver property owned by her father and appears to have paid out money owed to friends and family ahead of the debt due to GC Capital.
Hira said the records show Sun had also taken control of a friend’s company’s bank account to conduct financial transactions without using a Landmark account that was garnished as part of the ongoing court battle.
Forced to fight for every penny
In response to Hira’s submissions, Sun’s lawyer, Devin Lucas, insisted his client was doing her best to comply with Fowler’s order, noting the upcoming bankruptcy proceedings against her.
Lucas said a prison term could create an extraordinary situation in which one judge was jailing Sun for non-compliance with a payment order while another judge of the same court declares her insolvent.
But Fowler appeared to have little patience.
He noted that Sun filed her response to Friday’s application just minutes before the hearing began. He also said Sun never came to the court asking him to vary the conditions of his order, or asking for more time to comply.
Effectively, the judge said GC Capital has been forced to fight for every penny Sun has yet to pay them. And Sun’s courtroom record has been one of delay and obfuscation.
Fowler told Lucas he had already given Sun a suspended jail sentence; the only question for him to consider was whether or not he should lift the suspension and send her to jail.
The answer became increasingly clear as the day wore on.
Immediately after the judge ordered Sun’s arrest, Lucas stood to ask if Fowler would stay the order so that he could file an appeal right away.
Sun was already heading out the door in handcuffs.
“No,” Fowler replied tersely.
Tax problems
In addition to Friday’s hearing, Sun still faces an application by GC Capital for another contempt order in relation to what Hira claims are ongoing breaches of the court’s order.
The reality of Sun’s finances still appears to be a mystery.
She has claimed to be “cash poor” — insisting she earns less than $70,000 a year and that her only assets are the equity she holds in her companies.
Tax Court of Canada documents obtained by CBC News challenge those assertions.
According to an audit of Sun’s finances for 2013 and 2014, she was associated with at least a dozen corporations at the time and spent nearly half a million dollars each year on “personal living expenditures” — yet she claimed total income of $31,315 in 2013 and $40,066 in 2014.
Documents filed by the Canada Revenue Agency note that she also purchased and disposed of two Vancouver residential properties during that period, “each valued at more than $4 million.”
In March 2022, the Canada Revenue Agency concluded the audit by finding Sun had underreported her income by more than $5 million, reassessing her tax returns and slapping her with gross negligence penalties of more than $1.3 million.
Sun is appealing the tax assessment and penalties, claiming the CRA’s audit “is grossly inaccurate and invalid” as it fails to account for non-taxable loans and gifts she received from family and friends.
