SINGAPORE – After breaking up with his girlfriend of more than a year, the chief executive of a listed company sued her to recover the $468,090 he had spent on her during their relationship.
On Sept 9, the High Court dismissed Chander Agarwal’s claim that the various sums of money he spent on his former girlfriend, Felicia Lee, were loans that had to be repaid.
In a written judgment, Senior Judge Lee Seiu Kin ruled that most of the sums were gifts that Agarwal had willingly given to Lee.
These include $206,000 in credit card charges, $129,000 spent on overseas trips, $17,000 to engage a feng shui master for her flat and $30,000 in fees for a Stanford-NUS executive programme.
Agarwal failed to prove he had given her two other sums, including $50,000 he claimed he lent her to clear a debt to her former employer, the judge said.
The judge added that Agarwal could not point to any evidence showing that the woman had requested the disputed sums as loans or had agreed to repay him.
“The evidence before me clearly shows that the claimant, smitten by the defendant, had showered her with expensive gifts during their relationship,” the judge said.
“Unfortunately, when their relationship ended on a sour note, the claimant became embittered and was determined to extract a price from her.”
The judge quoted the lines from the 1697 play The Mourning Bride: “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”
He said: “This case shows that such emotion is not the sole province of one gender.”
Agarwal is the CEO and managing director of TCI Express, an Indian company listed on the National Stock Exchange of India and the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The defendant is a former flight attendant who later worked as an insurance agent and medical sales officer.
They met on a flight in 2019. Agarwal later approached Lee on Facebook, and they started meeting up.
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