A man whose life was “turned upside down” by a financial watchdog investigation has finally had the allegations against him dropped – six years after the claims surfaced.
Hunter Wang – who was a Richmond and Vancouver-based financial strategist – was alleged to have obstructed justice by coaching an investor to lie to a B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) investigator.
The matter took several years to resolve, effectively ruining the life Wang had at the time, given that he was thrown out of the financial industry while working for FS Financial Strategies Inc.
However, he took the matter to the B.C. Court of Appeal, where judges agreed that, at the time of his actions, the provision of the Securities Act regarding obstruction of justice pertained to concealing or withholding evidence only if it happens before an investigation has begun.
The court granted his appeal, effectively revoking the sanctions imposed on him, and sent the matter back to the BCSC, so that a panel could determine if Wang engaged in conduct that was abusive to capital markets.
On Friday, the BCSC’s executive director, instead, chose to drop the allegations against Wang, as well as Jing “Janet” Zhang, because the respondents have already been subject to market prohibitions for about two years.
"Lowest point of my life": Wang
The executive director also noted that if the panel found the respondents had engaged in conduct abusive to the public markets, it would probably not impose market prohibitions equal to or exceeding the original sanctions, and it would likely grant them credit for the length of those previously imposed bans.
Wang told the Richmond News earlier this year how almost six years of torment had taken its toll and, by his own admission, he was at the “lowest point in his life” last fall.
Wang, now 37, was wracked with shame at being at the centre of a BCSC investigation, which took several years to conclude and virtually robbed him of his thirties.
“I felt ashamed of who I was as a person,” said Wang in March.
Since then, Wang has started talking openly about the mistake he made when he followed the instructions of his boss, Frankie Lim, to coach an investor to lie to a BCSC investigator in 2014, as part of a larger industry probe into Lim’s and FS Financial Strategies’ dealings.
Wang was found by a BCSC disciplinary panel to have obstructed the course of justice and, in 2021, was ordered to pay a $30,000 fine and was suspended from some investment market participation for two years.
He never contested the facts of the investigation, but what he did object to was the BCSC’s sanctions, which were arrived at via the BC Securities Act.
