Mr. Woo’s lawyers argue that efforts to collect on the judgment have been hampered by what court papers called a “mazelike network of offshore nominees
and trusts (many of which are managed by close family members and classmates from Harvard).”
For example, the estate where Mr. Spackman lives — in a section of Hong Kong
that Forbes has described as “the wealthiest neighborhood on earth” — is owned through a series of shell companies, a Hong Kong company in turn owned by a British Virgin Islands company, court papers say.
In documents filed in 2014, the company said that Mr. Spackman had not appeared in court in South Korea
because he was unaware of the case until just before the High Court ruling — which was later overturned by the Supreme Court for all defendants except Mr. Spackman.
The Seoul High Court said that Mr. Spackman, a major investor in the company, fled Korea amid claims
of stock price manipulation, departing before the Korean authorities arrested a business partner.
“They could sue Harvard to get the money back, and they’d be entitled to get it back if they can show that it was fraudulently transferred.”
John Han, a lawyer with the firm Kobre & Kim, which is handling the investor’s case, said the firm
had no plans to sue Harvard, which he said had been unwittingly entangled in the dispute.
While acknowledging that Mr. Spackman was fined $40,000 by the Korean authorities in connection with
the Littauer matter, Mr. Spackman “maintains he did not commit the offenses,” the documents said.
Mr. Spackman, an American citizen and permanent resident of Hong Kong, is well known in South Korea, partly because he is the son of James C. Spackman, who was adopted by Americans in 1955 after his biological parents died during the Korean War,
and later advanced in the business world to become chief of Prudential’s international insurance group.