SINGAPORE — A logistics company chief executive has lost his High Court bid to sue his former girlfriend for nearly US$370,000 (S$468,090) in luxury gifts and expenses he spent on her during their relationship, with the court ruling that a lover's lavish spending cannot be converted into a loan after a breakup.
Chander Agarwal, the chief executive of an Indian logistics company, had claimed that Felicia Lee, a former flight attendant, owed him for a catalogue of extravagant spending during their relationship. Court documents showed he showered her with Hermes, Dior and Prada items, spent tens of thousands of dollars on first-class flight tickets, and paid large sums for her life insurance premiums, a university programme and her personal expenses charged to his American Express card. He even paid thousands of dollars to a feng shui master to spiritually harmonise Lee's flat — arguing in court that this had to have been a loan because he is Indian and does not believe in feng shui.
The pair met on a flight in 2019 and began a romantic relationship in 2022, but broke up at the end of 2023 after Agarwal suspected Lee of cheating on him. Agarwal produced a handwritten agreement bearing both their signatures to support his claim that the money was lent. Lee denied signing the document, and the judge ultimately attached no weight to it.
Senior Judge Lee Seiu Kin dismissed the case, finding in a written judgment that the money was spent on gifts and could not be treated as loans. The court found that Agarwal could not prove that Lee had asked for any of the disputed sums or agreed to repay them.
The judge observed that the evidence clearly showed Agarwal had been smitten by Lee and had showered her with expensive gifts during the relationship, noting on occasion her spontaneous reluctance to accept them. He found it remarkable that across a relationship lasting more than a year, with a large volume of WhatsApp messages exchanged between the pair, Agarwal could not point to any written evidence supporting the existence of a loan.
It was also, the judge said, inherently difficult to believe that a woman on a relatively modest salary would repeatedly borrow such significant sums to spend on luxury items. Positions taken by Agarwal in court were described as contrary to common sense and unsustainable.
The ruling draws a firm line under disputes of this kind: without a genuine agreement, generosity in a relationship cannot be clawed back through the courts after it ends. The case drew wide attention in Singapore for its detailed airing of the couple's luxury lifestyle and the unusual attempt to reframe romance spending as recoverable debt.