A couple used a charity set up to save Chinese tigers as their personal piggy bank, funding a lifestyle of extravagant dinners and wine, a court heard. 
 
 Li Quan claimed money for the Save China’s Tigers charity was used to fund the lavish personal lives of her and her estranged husband Stuart Bray as she told the High Court she was entitled to more of the couple’s assets than Mr Bray is prepared to give. 
 
 Ms Li claimed money put into the charity, which counts Jackie Chan as an ambassador, was directly used by the pair. She says more than £50 million worth of assets is at stake. 
 
 "We were using the money to fund our personal things,” she told the High Court. 
 
 She said Mr Bray had told her "repeatedly over the years" not to make a distinction between the "charities, the trust and the companies" because they are "one and the same". 
 
 "That is what he told me all the time," she said. 
 
 "I did not regard it as fraud because my husband told me it was one and the same. I am not a financial person. I am not an accountant." 
 
 She said her estranged husband, who denies her claims, had her removed from the board of the charity and that she had “no power.” She also alleged he put money during their relationship into a trust, to which he had access through a “back door.” 
 
 Mr Bray, 50, is yet to give evidence. 
 
 Evidence in the case is being heard at a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court but Mr Justice Coleridge has given permission for the case to be covered by journalists. 
 
 Save China's Tigers website says it is "one of the most dynamic conservation organisations" in the world and has links to China, the UK, South Africa and the United States. 
 
 The website says few, if any, Chinese tigers exist in the wild. 
 
 The couple set up the charity in 2000 and the charity helped fund a survey of the Chinese tiger. In 2002, Mr Bray acquired 33,000 hectares of land in South Africa for a "rewilding program", says the website. 
 
 The following year two Chinese tiger cubs - Cathay and Hope - travelled to South Africa for "rewilding training". And in 2004 two more cubs - TigerWoods and Madonna - left China for Laohu Valley Reserve, the website states. 
 
 By 2011 the number of South China tigers at Laohu Valley had risen to 12, it adds. 

 A former Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) executive’s wife said he used their animal conservation charity to hide assets while she spent the group’s money on furniture and expensive meals. 
 
 Stuart Bray and his wife, Li Quan, are fighting over about 50 million pounds ($81 million) of assets held by Save China’s Tigers, which they founded in 2000, in their divorce case in London. 
 
 The former banker used a trust connected to the charity as “shelter” for their personal wealth, Li said at a hearing in the case this morning. Bray, who left the German lender in 2001, said outside court that “what she is now saying is untrue.” Lawyers representing the charity declined to comment. 
 
 Court rulings favoring less wealthy partners led a U.K. appeals court to call London the “divorce capital of the world for aspiring wives” in 2007. Oil trader Michael Prest, accused by his ex-wife of hiding assets in offshore companies, is facing jail after the U.K.’s Supreme Court ruled against him in June. 
 
 Li’s evidence suggested she and Bray were defrauding the charity “on a grand and big scale,” Judge Paul Coleridge said to her at the hearing. “It was incredibly dishonest.” 
 
 Li said she had tried to ensure donations were spent on charitable projects, and the couple had used trusts to store their own assets. 
 
 “I bought furniture,” she said. “We had expensive dinners. We had expensive wines.” 
 
 Jackie Chan 
 
 She denied committing fraud and said she had no detailed knowledge of the organization’s financial affairs. 
 
 “I intensely hope to continue my work” with tigers, she said. 
 
 Save China’s Tigers, which counted actor Jackie Chan as an ambassador, planned to establish nature reserves in China for tigers bred in captivity in Africa. 
 
 Bray joined Deutsche Bank when it bought his unit of Bankers Trust Corp. in 1999. He worked as co-head of a department that dealt with client tax transactions before leaving in 2001, according to a 2009 preliminary ruling in his libel case against the lender. 
 
 Bray sued the Frankfurt-based lender in 2007 after it made public statements about losses resulting from a U.S. tax probe into his former unit. There is no record of a verdict in the case in an online database of U.K. court judgments. Kathryn Hanes, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment. 
 
 Li told the court Bray had used a settlement with Deutsche Bank to help fund their charity. Her lawyers declined to comment outside court. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Kit Chellel in London at cchellel@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net
– A prominent wildlife charity called Save China's Tigers did more than try to save tigers—it provided an endless source of cash for the founders' opulent lifestyle, according to allegations in a nasty divorce case. Li Quan says soon-to-be-ex Stuart Bray, a former Deutsche Bank executive, used deceptive accounting practices to divert assets to the couple, reports the Telegraph. "We were using the money to fund our personal things," she told the judge in London. But she swears she was unaware of any improprieties at the time because "I am not a financial person." The couple is fighting over about $81 million in assets held by the charity they founded in 2000, reports Bloomberg. If you've heard of SCT, it might be because it's had spokespeople such as Jackie Chan. Bray denies his wife's accusations, though he hasn't presented his side in court yet. The judge says Li's testimony points to fraud "on a grand and big scale," though it's not clear whether any legal ramifications will follow.