Chapter bid provides to monetary woes threatening debt-ridden B.C. developer

A B.C. developer who has already risked jail time for failing to come back clear concerning the funds behind her lavish life-style now faces a doable chapter order over a multimillion-dollar mortgage she assured on prime property within the coronary heart of Vancouver’s Cambie Corridor.

According to B.C. Supreme Court paperwork filed earlier this month, TCC Mortgage Holdings superior greater than $67.6 million to corporations managed by Helen Chan Sun to develop a 1.3-hectare plot of land south of Oakridge generally known as the Shawn Oaks web site.

The property at present hosts 72 late-’60s-era townhomes, which Sun had hoped to rework right into a booming improvement boasting two 30-storey-plus towers and 180 items of social housing.

But greater than a 12 months after a choose put the mission into foreclosures and ordered the sale of the property, court docket paperwork declare the true property firm employed to market Shawn Oaks hasn’t acquired a single supply for the land.

And TCC Mortgage Holdings desires a chapter order in opposition to Sun, who the corporate claims hasn’t paid a penny again in opposition to a debt now price $78.1 million and counting.

Betting on the Cambie Corridor

Sun didn’t reply to an electronic mail from CBC News despatched to her firm’s web site.

The proceedings are the most recent chapter in an advanced net of economic proceedings involving Sun in each B.C. Supreme Court and the Tax Court of Canada, the place she is preventing a $6-million tax invoice that features penalties for allegedly underreporting greater than $5 million price of earnings.

Sun owns Landmark Premiere Properties Ltd., an organization that, in flip, creates different companies to purchase and handle properties recognized for future improvement.

Sun and Landmark invested closely in properties situated in an space as soon as thought of Vancouver’s hottest actual property prospect, the so-called Cambie Corridor, supercharged by the $6.5-billion redevelopment of the Oakridge web site meant to deal with practically 6,000 residents in 14 towers.

But that was earlier than the downturn that noticed apartment costs stoop final 12 months because the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation warned that 2,500 new condos have been sitting unsold and empty in Metro Vancouver — double the quantity for 2024.

Sun’s fortunes appeared to show with the market. In 2018, she declared her private internet price at $94 million — a determine that had dropped to $21 million by 2023, in line with an announcement filed that 12 months.

2nd chapter case

Creditors have pressured two of Landmark’s properties within the Cambie Corridor — together with Shawn Oaks — into receivership.

According to court docket paperwork, Sun and Landmark have been discovered responsible for greater than $150 million of debt.

TCC Mortgage Holdings is the second creditor to hunt a chapter order in opposition to her.

The different chapter software was filed by one other creditor final 12 months in relation to money owed of $45 million.

In an affidavit filed in response to that software, Sun claimed “nearly all the money that I have accumulated over my lifetime has been invested through Landmark and the Landmark companies in their various real estate projects.”

“The only assets I personally own of any value are my equity in those companies which own various development properties in Metro Vancouver and shareholder’s loans to those companies whose equity is represented through my shareholdings and shareholder’s loans,” Sun wrote.

Insurer claims thousands and thousands in danger

Filings in each chapter claims speculate on the impression the authorized proceedings themselves might have on the advertising and marketing of Sun’s properties.

Landmark additionally owns the remaining stock of items at Foster Martin, a multi-tower, multi-phase White Rock apartment mission Sun claims would generate “significant cash proceeds on completion.”

But she warned that being declared bankrupt might give pre-sale purchasers at Foster Martin a possibility to “rescind their purchase contract or at least argue that position.”

An organization that gives the insurance coverage that enables deposits to be launched for improvement echoed these issues in one other response, saying that insured deposits totalling greater than $18.5 million have been launched into the Foster Martin mission.

“There is a material risk that Ms. Sun’s bankruptcy would allow 93 pre-sale purchasers of the Foster Martin Project to rescind their purchase contracts,” the corporate argues.

“The loss of those sales (worth approximately $131 million) would jeopardize recovery prospects for Landmark’s White Rocks’ creditors generally, and would likely crystallize a payout liability of more than $18.5 million for [the insurance company].”

As a part of the most recent chapter software, TCC Mortgage Holdings is searching for a sealing order to forestall the general public from seeing “confidential information” in regards to the worth of the Shawn Oaks lands in addition to efforts to market and promote the property.

“The marketing and sales processes for the lands would be impaired if the appraisal and Colliers’ marketing reports were made publicly available,” an affidavit written in help of the sealing order reads.

“For example, if made public, a prospective purchaser would be unlikely to submit an offer at a price in excess of appraised value and in light of the market response, even if they believed the lands to be worth substantially more.”

Allegations of ‘gross negligence’

In authorized proceedings, Sun has claimed to be “cash poor” — insisting she earns lower than $70,000 a 12 months and that her solely belongings are the fairness she holds in her corporations.

But courts have famous her fondness for designer purchases and luxurious automobiles.

In December 2024, one choose mentioned “despite her evidence that she has a modest annual income … Ms. Sun leads a lavish lifestyle making regular purchases at luxury stores, which are indicative of someone whose income well exceeds the $60,000 to $70,000 she claims to make on an annual basis.”

CBC News has obtained tax court docket paperwork associated to an audit of Sun’s funds for the years 2013 and 2014.

According to these filings, Sun was related to no less than a dozen companies on the time and spent practically half 1,000,000 {dollars} every year on “personal living expenditures” — but she claimed whole earnings of $31,315 in 2013 and $40,066 in 2014.

Documents filed by the Canada Revenue Agency observe that she additionally bought and disposed of two Vancouver residential properties throughout that interval, “each valued at more than $4 million.”

In March 2022, the Canada Revenue Agency concluded the audit by discovering Sun had underreported her earnings by greater than $5 million, reassessing her tax returns and slapping her with gross negligence penalties of greater than $1.3 million.

Sun is interesting the tax evaluation and penalties, claiming the CRA’s audit “is grossly inaccurate and invalid” because it fails to account for non-taxable loans and items she acquired from household and mates.

In court docket paperwork, the CRA — represented by Shawn Oaks— disagrees.

“The Appellant earned and failed to report incomes of $3,201,350 and $2,054,536 in 2013 and 2014,” the federal government says in its tax court docket filings.

“The Appellant knowingly or under circumstances amounting to gross negligence, made or participated in, assented to or acquiesced in the making of false statements or omissions in her 2013 and 2014 income tax returns by failing to report material amounts of income.”

‘That ship has sailed’

It’s not the primary time Sun has been accused of obfuscation in a court docket continuing.

In a separate case, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Richard Fowler gave Sun a 40-day jail sentence for contempt of court docket final 12 months for failing to adjust to an order to pay a $3.5-million debt — an order he suspended to provide Sun time to totally account for her earnings and expenditures.

The contempt proceedings date again to a $4.5-million mortgage GC Capital Inc. issued to a pair of corporations in 2018 in relation to a failed actual property mission in Burnaby.

Sun and one other man assured the mortgage, which meant that when the businesses defaulted on the mortgage, GC Capital Inc. went after the guarantors.

In 2021, Sun reached a cope with GC Capital, agreeing to pay $5.6 million in instalments. She paid roughly $3 million towards the debt, however stopped paying in the summertime of 2022.

Two years later, the corporate obtained a judgment from a B.C. Supreme Court registrar ordering Sun to make month-to-month funds of $300,000 till the remainder of the debt is paid off.

She provided funds of simply $3,000 a month towards the debt. One choose identified that it might take greater than 80 years to repay the debt at that charge.

Finally, GC Capital utilized to commit Sun to jail for contempt of court docket in November, sparking the extraordinary listening to earlier than Fowler, who mentioned it is clear from her life-style that she has not been forthcoming about her failure to make the month-to-month funds.

The choose gave Sun till Feb. 20 to conform or danger incarceration. No additional court docket dates have been set within the matter at the moment.

“Your client has to understand that she is hanging by a very, very, very fine thread at this point,” Fowler informed Sun’s lawyer on the contempt listening to.

“The time to obfuscate and try to be obstructionist — that ship has sailed.”