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HONG KONG, Aug 1 (Reuters) Two mainland Chinese brothers told a Hong Kong court they tried to plunder the grave of the late wife of Asia's richest man, Li Ka-shing, in a failed bid to blackmail him for her bones, a newspaper reported today.

The brothers, surnamed Lau, told Hong Kong's High Court that they had hatched the plan with six others, the Ming Pao newspaper reported.

A spokesperson for the judiciary said the two mainlanders faced several charges, including blackmail and criminal damage to a tomb.

The attempted grave robbery took place around midnight on January. 29 last year at a Buddhist cemetery on Hong Kong island.

The men had begun digging the grave when a cemetery caretaker and his wife discovered them, the paper added.

The gang attacked the two with meat cleavers, robbing them of their mobile phones and raiding their office of HK$50,000 (6,400 dollar), the court heard. The gang then fled.

The grave of his late wife, Chong Yuet-ming, who died in 1990, was later found prised open with two boxes of digging tools lying nearby, the newspaper said. The bones had not been disturbed.

Li has a fortune estimated by Forbes at 18.8 billion dollars, which would make him the 10th richest man in the world and the wealthiest living in Asia.

Li's son, Victor Li, was kidnapped in 1996 and released after a reported ransom of HK$1 billion was paid.

REUTERS AE PM300