Zhao Wei’s Ex-Husband Lost A$60M Gambling in Australia—100-Page Court Files Reveal Her Fall

In late June 2026, a Hong Kong Supreme Court ruling unexpectedly brought Huang Yulong, a man who had vanished from public view for years, back into the spotlight. The seven-year lawsuit over gambling debt brokerage ended in Huang's favor. Yet the case also exposed his enormous debts and chaotic flight from creditors. Huang's sudden reappearance may also hold the key to one of the Chinese entertainment Why top actress Zhao Wei abruptly disappeared in the summer of 2021, with her entire online presence erased overnight. Behind the illusion of a female Warren Buffett and her tycoon husband lay a political gamble with far-reaching consequences. The mystery of Huang Yulong. The sudden rise of a super-capitalist. Zhao Wei, who rose to fame through My Fair Princess, became one of China's most famous and influential actresses. In 2016, she appeared on the Hurun Global Rich List, ranking 1,164th with an estimated net worth of RMB 6.6 billion. In a ranking dominated by technology and real estate tycoons, the sudden appearance of an actress was seen as a striking exception. Much of this wealth was attributed to her husband, Huang Yulong. According to publicly available records, Huang was born in 1976 into a poor family in Xiaodong County, Hunan Province. Before 2008, he was virtually invisible, with no known public business activity and little recognition within commercial circles. Yet after online rumors emerged in December 2008 that he had married Zhao Wei in Singapore, China appeared to gain a new super-capitalist, allegedly controlling businesses across dozens of industries and assets supposedly worth tens of billions of dollars. Before meeting Zhao, Huang had reportedly learned to leverage the fame of female celebrities to raise his own profile and gain access to capital. While courting Hong Kong beauty queen Tracy Ip, he allegedly paid for hotel advertising to create opportunities to meet her privately, personally taught her stock trading, and gave her property. In the process, he helped transform an ordinary pageant winner, earning just over $10,000 a month, into a widely publicized stock market beauty queen. After that relationship ended abruptly, Huang joined forces with Zhao Wei, using his connections and initial capital to help cultivate her image as a female Warren Buffett. One widely circulated account claims that Huang was introduced through a fellow Hunan native to Xu Zhongheng, then mayor of Shenzhen, and became his personal driver. Skilled at cultivating relationships, Huang was said to have quickly gained Xu's trust and through him built powerful connections in both political and business circles. After Xu Zhongheng fell from power, allegedly leaving behind assets worth as much as $20 billion, Huang was rumored to have taken control of part of the illicit fortune. Zhao Wei then allegedly helped him obtain Singaporean citizenship and establish a complex network of offshore companies in Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands. Huang was also accused of becoming a financial proxy for Xiaojian Hua, the tycoon behind Tomorrow Group. This placed him close to the political front lines of Xi Jinping's campaign against powerful financial interests and the financial networks associated with Zhang Zemin's faction and Shanghai's political elite. By then, Huang Yulong was allegedly already deeply entangled in that web. The $60 million gamble, the beginning of the empire's collapse. The gambling debt dispute heard in 2026 shed new light on Huang Yulong's reckless gambling habits during his early years. On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year in 2015, Huang and his assistant flew to Crown Casino in Perth, Western Australia. As a top-tier VIP, Huang received extravagant treatment from the casino's VIP services overseen by Vice President Kai Yifeng, private jet transfers, round-the-clock butler service in a presidential suite, and immediate access to gaming whenever he wished. Kai was a former executive director of Hong Kong broadcaster ATV and the widow of Sheng Pinru, a descendant of Sheng Huai, a prominent figure in China's late Qing self-strengthening movement. A longtime member of Hong Kong High Society, she owned a 7,000-square-foot villa in Stanley and reportedly employed eight domestic workers and a private driver. According to court documents, Huang was granted a HK$40 million gambling credit line upon arriving at the casino and lost the entire amount in less than two days. Alarmed by the speed of his losses, the casino's risk control team refused to extend further substantial credit. Unwilling to stop, Huang turned to Kai, who had been closely attending to him. She contacted executives at the Australian operations of Sun City Group and approached Brother Nam, a VIP room operator with whom she had close ties. Nam was reportedly a senior associate of Sun City founder Alvin Chow and an underworld figure known for ruthless methods. With Kai acting as guarantor and intermediary, Sun City arranged another odd 20 million in special gaming chips for Huang, bringing his total gambling exposure to a reported odd 60 million. Predictably, Huang lost the new chips within days. He then began a years-long process of borrowing, liquidating assets, and shifting money from one source to another to repay the debt. Through his personal assistant, Huang also issued three checks, each worth HK$60 million. Kai entered her own name as the payee and attempted to cash them, but the bank refused payment. After repayment was delayed, the parties agreed to use a Hong Kong Bay Area property valued at HK$70 million to offset part of the debt. The property was registered in the name of Miss Lee, a friend of Huang. Huang paid Kai a HK$10 million deposit toward its purchase. However, he failed to pay the remaining balance. When Miss Lee threatened to cancel the transaction, Kai paid the full purchase price herself. In February 2016, following direct intervention and mediation by Alvin Chow, Huang finally began repaying the principal owed to Sun City. After nearly four years of financial maneuvering, he completed repayment of the enormous gambling principal and was considered square with the group. The problem was the interest. Huang had allegedly agreed verbally with Kai to an annual rate of 24%, but no interest payments were made. After years of unsuccessful collection attempts, the dispute was taken to a Hong Kong court. Kai argued that the money had been a personal oral loan from her and that Huang was therefore liable for both principal and interest. Huang assembled a formidable legal team and maintained that Sun City, not Kai, had been the true creditor, while Kai had merely acted as an intermediary. In 2026, the Hong Kong High Court issued a judgment of nearly 100 pages and ruled in Huang's favor. Yet the most intriguing detail was the timing. The legal battle reached its most intense stage in 2021, behind the disappearance of Little Swallow. In 2021, Alvin Chow was arrested in Macau and the Sun City empire collapsed almost overnight. In March of that year, Huang Yulong boarded his private jet and flew to the luxury wine estate in Bordeaux, France, that he and Zhaowei had previously purchased as a refuge. But when the cabin door opened, he was met not by the estate's staff, but by French police. The Chinese government had reportedly requested an Interpol red notice for Huang on suspicion of money laundering, alleging that he was involved in a mainland peer-to-peer lending scandal worth tens of billions of yuan. Huang, however, allegedly understood that the P2P defaults and money laundering charges were merely a pretext. Beijing was not primarily interested in the illicit funds, but in Huang himself— and the secrets he held about another powerful figure. Several days after Huang was placed under house arrest in Bordeaux, his close friend Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, reportedly called him. By then, Ma had disappeared from public view for more than three months after his outspoken remarks at the Bunda Summit in October 2020 contributed to the suspension of Ant Group's Blockbuster IPO. According to a purported secret court recording, later obtained and released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Ma no longer sounded like the confident public speaker he had once been. He allegedly told Huang, If you do not return, they will make sure you have nowhere left to go. In that context, they could only have referred to the Chinese Communist Party's highest-level anti-corruption and state security authorities. Why would the Party go so far as to use Jack Ma to pressure Huang into returning to China? And who was the real target? According to the files, that person was Sun Lijun, a former Vice Minister of Public Security, Director of the Ministry's First Bureau, and Deputy Head of the Central 610 Office. He had access to some of the country's most powerful instruments of state coercion, including intelligence operations, covert surveillance, lists of dissidents, and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. He was also described as a direct commander of the 2015 mass arrests of human rights lawyers and as a key operator behind the system's most sensitive and secretive activities. Sun was accused of building an independent political faction beyond the control of Xi Jinping's leadership. Official statements charged him with forming cliques, taking control of key departments, and seriously endangering national political security. In April 2020, he was removed from power. In the sweeping political purge surrounding the Sun Lijun case, Huang Youlong became one of the most critical links. During a later extradition hearing in France, Huang revealed in his own defense that in 2018, Sun had personally invited, and effectively pressured, to invest $5 million in a mysterious security company. During Hong Kong's 2019 anti-extradition bill protests, the company hired large numbers of personnel and was suspected of assisting the Hong Kong police with violent enforcement operations and covert stability maintenance activities that could not be publicly acknowledged. That night in Bordeaux, Huang secretly activated a recording device. He captured not only every word Jack Ma said, but also a series of threatening and coercive calls over the following days from Chinese officials handling the case, as well as staff at the Chinese embassy in France. Just days later, several of Huang's immediate relatives in mainland China were detained by local state security authorities on the grounds that they were required to assist with an investigation. Then, late on August 26th, 2021, films and television series starring Zhao Wei, including My Fair Princess, Gone with the Bullets, Romance in the Rain, and Painted Skin, were simultaneously removed from platforms such as iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku. Her name was abruptly erased from cast lists. Her Weibo fan page was shut down, while her Baidu bike entry was reduced to only a few lines of basic information. What happened to Zhao Wei in the summer of 2021 was merely a byproduct of a carefully orchestrated transnational political pursuit. The pressure peaked in May 2021 at a court in Bordeaux. Through the Chinese embassy in France, Chinese diplomatic and media officials reportedly pressed French prosecutors on three separate occasions to grant the case special treatment and accelerate Huang's extradition. They did not expect Huang's lawyers to play recordings in court containing alleged threats from Jack Ma and Chinese officials. The French court subsequently rejected Beijing's extradition request, while Interpol's internal review body formally withdrew the red notice against Huang Youlong. Divorce, exile, and missing his father's funeral. The price of power. Although Huang Youlong won the lawsuit, his fate has been grim. He reportedly divorced Zhao Wei in secret and has spent years living in France, afraid to return to mainland China. Now in his 50s, he is also said to be in poor health. When his elderly father died, Huang allegedly did not even dare return for the funeral, fearing retaliation from the authorities. The lawsuit also exposed his precarious financial situation. Public records show that he remains entangled in several debt disputes. Wise Choice is seeking to recover HK$753 million, with annual interest exceeding 20%. His landlord has sued him for HK$0.8 million in unpaid rent and management fees on a luxury apartment and six parking spaces in Tsuen Wan. China Minsheng Trust has also filed two lawsuits against Zhao Wei and Huang over personal guarantee disputes. Under mounting financial pressure, Huang began disposing of overseas assets. Between 2021 and 2022, he reportedly transferred properties in France, closed several Hong Kong companies, sold homes and luxury cars to raise cash, and moved assets quickly to keep them beyond creditors' reach. Zhao Wei, meanwhile, appears to have been little more than a carefully chosen instrument. Recent candid photos showed her looking visibly worn. Far removed from her former glamour. Of everything Zhao Wei lost, perhaps the greatest loss was herself. She went from an innocent young actress to a player shaped by capital and forced to compromise with power, only to lose her way in the very system she had entered. What do you think of this tragic story? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for watching and see you next time.