מחלקת הליטיגציה של סיידן לו מביסה את אתגר הסמכות השיפוטית על ידי נוכל סיני במקרה תקדימי בניו יורק

On August 1, 2023, following nearly two hours of oral argument, New York Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen denied a motion to dismiss filed by defendant Xueyuan Han in a pathbreaking international fraud case filed by Seiden Law. Seiden Law’s head of litigation, Amiad Kushner, argued the motion for the plaintiffs, who are a group of over ninety Chinese institutional and individual investors.

Han is the disgraced founder and controller of the Hanfor organization, which at its height managed approximately $13 billion in assets in China. In late 2018, the fraudulent conduct of Han’s empire was exposed in a nationwide Chinese government crackdown. In September 2018, just as the Chinese criminal investigations began, Han secretly fled China for New York, where he has resided ever since. In December 2022, Seiden Law sued Han in New York. The lawsuit alleges that Han looted over $1 billion in investor funds in China and diverted them to accounts that he exclusively controls, including in New York. The plaintiffs collectively lost at least $50 million in the fraud.

In his motion to dismiss, Han’s primary argument was that the New York case should be dismissed under the doctrine of forum non conveniens, because plaintiffs’ investments were made in China, most of their witnesses are in China, and their claims were brought under Chinese law. In response, Seiden Law argued that the case has a substantial nexus to New York given that Han is a New York resident, made misrepresentations to plaintiffs from New York, and routed tens of millions of dollars in stolen funds to his New York bank accounts. After hearing intense arguments that spanned numerous issues of U.S. and Chinese law, the Court found that Han had not met his burden of demonstrating that New York is an inappropriate forum.