CEO spends S$468,000 on girlfriend, breaks up & sues her in S'pore to get money back

A CEO sued his ex-girlfriend for the money he lavished on her while they were a couple.

Chander Agarwal, the CEO and managing director of a logistics company, sued his ex, Felicia Lee.

He claimed Lee owed him S$468,090, which he said he had spent on her as loans he expected her to repay. 

The money covered a wide range of items, including first-class plane tickets, feng shui services, and a Stanford-NUS management course.

The Straits Times (ST) reported that on Sep. 9, the judge dismissed Agarwal's claim, ruling that they were gifts that he willingly gave her.

Agarwal has been ordered to pay Lee's legal costs.

Who are they?

Lee was formerly a flight attendant, and subsequently worked as an insurance agent and medical sales officer, according to court documents seen by Mothership.

Agarwal and Lee met on a flight in 2019. He added her on Facebook afterwards.

The pair began to meet up, at which point he had already gave her "lavish gifts".

In September 2022, they began their romantic relationship. It lasted up till December 2023, when he broke up with her for suspected infidelity.

He then began legal action towards Lee in March 2024.

What'd he pay for?

According to court documents seen by Mothership, Lee allegedly requested several interest-free loans from Agarwal over the course of the relationship.

These included the following:

• About S$206,000 in credit card charges
• Approximately S$50,000 and S$64,500 for First Class plane tickets to the U.S. and shopping expenses
• S$17,000 for a feng shui master's services
• S$30,000 for a Stanford-NUS programme in international management
• S$50,000 to Lee's former employer, after she quit her job as an insurance agent without hitting the target
• S$15,000 for Lee's fashion business

Judgement

The judge concluded that the evidence shows that Agarwal had intended the disputed sums as gifts to Lee.

The judge said:

"It is incredible that for a relationship that lasted for more than a year with so many WhatsApp messages exchanged between them, the Claimant could not point to any written evidence to support his case. It is also inherently incredible that the Defendant, with her relatively modest salary, would repeatedly borrow such significant sums to spend on luxury items. In light of the foregoing, I find that the Disputed Sums were given to the Defendant as gifts."

The judge then listed examples where Agarwal had given or offered the gifts to Lee.

In May 2021, Agarwal said, "Soon soon can fly. I have a first class/suite ticket booked for you already wherever you want to go when it opens. If not take the private jet then." This was in response to Lee telling him that it had been years since she last took a plane.

In August 2022, when Lee asked how she could repay him for the amount he spent, he said: "No need. I am not a moneylender".

Despite this, he also gave other reasons why some of the expenses should be treated as loans.

For instance, he claimed that the money given for feng shui services had to be a loan as he was Indian and did not believe in feng shui.

When he gave her money to take the Stanford-NUS management course, he supposedly told her that he was giving her a "grant", and that in India the word "grant" means a loan.

The judge dismissed these contentions.

When cross-examined, Agarwal said the gifts became loans when they entered into a relationship: "Only till the fact that when we started dating is when everything became a loan, everything was transactional. Before that, it wasn’t."

He also claimed that once she accepted his offers, the money spent would become loans.

The judge dubbed this "counterintuitive".

The "contract"

The only piece of documentary evidence that Agarwal could produce to support his claim was a handwritten agreement that read:

"To whomsoever it concerns.

I, felicia lee, taking deposit from Chander Agarwal every month 10-25k sgd belongs to Chander (sic) as he is saving for a rainy day.

I will not take it for my use and give it to him whenever he needs it."

Both individuals' signatures followed.

Agarwal claimed that "deposit" in this case meant a loan, while Lee denied ever "having signed or even seen" the agreement.

The judge dismissed the significance of this note, saying that its contents were "plainly contradicted by the facts" that Lee did spend the money for her own use.

He also noted that the defendant had produced another subsequent note, signed again by both parties, that stated that Agarwal would "never attempt to ask Felicia Lee to return back her car or any items given to her out of my own goodwill".

The alleged cheating

Agarwal further accused Lee of misrepresenting their relationship to him, claiming that though he was under the impression that they were in "a genuine and exclusive romantic relationship".

This, according to Agarwal, "induced him into giving [her] the [money]".

However, he claimed that Lee had relations with other men and was unfaithful.

The judge ruled that the nature of the relationship had no bearing on the distinction whether Agarwal had given the money as a gift or as a loan.

He stated that if Agarwal "thought they were in a relationship, whether they were exclusive or not, such that he intended to give the Defendant moneys as gifts, then those moneys were gifts."

It was further noted that Agarwal himself had sexual relations with two other women during the relationship.

The judge concluded, "The evidence before me clearly show that the Claimant, smitten by the Defendant, had showered her with expensive gifts during their relationship."

He then quoted the English playwright William Congreve: "'Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d'... This case shows that such emotion is not the sole province of one gender.”