Hong Kong, September 30: Billionaire entrepreneur David Ho has been charged with assaulting a woman he met online and confining her at his swank Vancouver home on Canada’s Pacific Coast, police said overnight.
The Hong Kong expatriate and founder of now-defunct Harmony Airways was arrested yesterday following a year-long investigation into an incident at his home in December 2008.
Mr Ho, 57, had arranged to meet the woman he first made contact with via an online chat room, picked her up and together they returned to his mansion.
At approximately 4.45am the next morning, the scion of a Chinese tobacco tycoon allegedly “blocked the door and wouldn’t allow her to leave”, said police Superintendent Rob Rothwell.
The woman called a police emergency hotline, but was unable to provide the address of the home, he said.
Police said a “violent struggle” ensued while she was still on the phone with a police dispatcher, in which the woman suffered several injuries, including a fractured ankle as she escaped outside.
Once in the yard, her screams were heard by neighbours who alerted police.
Mr Ho, whose family is said to have been a major investor in Bill Gates’s Microsoft, as well as IBM and HSBC bank, was charged with possession of a 9mm handgun, possession of cocaine and cannabis, causing bodily harm and unlawful confinement.
Mr Ho, who arrived in Canada in 1984 and eventually became a Canadian citizen, was held in custody yesterday, and then released after paying a $C100,000 ($105,567) bail in cash.
His first court appearance is set for October 26.
—Agencies