Michael Sisak, Jennifer Peltz and Larry Neumeister
A self-exiled billionaire Chinese business tycoon once believed to be among China’s wealthiest men was sentenced to 30 years in a US prison for a massive financial fraud that a federal judge said cost over 1000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars.
Guo Wengui, who is also known as Miles Guo, fled China a decade ago and reinvented himself as a US-based Communist Party critic. He was sentenced in a Manhattan courtroom packed with his supporters by Judge Analisa Torres who said he “preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China,” taking their money so he could live lavishly.
Prosecutors say Guo convinced hundreds of thousands of people to invest more than $US1 billion ($1.5 billion) total in entities he controlled, including his media company, GTV Media Group, and his so-called Himalaya Farm Alliance and the Himalaya Exchange.
Before he was sentenced, Guo protested his treatment in jail, saying he was taken to the hospital on the morning of his sentence. He disputed a prosecutor’s portrayal of him as a malingerer faking illness, saying he repeatedly vomited as he was returned to jail before being brought to court.
“When I came here, I said: ‘I have a tummy ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel well,’” Guo said through an interpreter of his courthouse arrival. Later, Guo wiped his mouth repeatedly with a tissue.
He only briefly addressed the criminal case, defending his intentions by saying in reference to the Chinese Communist Party: “The reason I came to the US was to destroy the CCP.”
The judge, in sentencing him, read snippets of letters she received from victims who described losing their life savings and feeling severely anxious and shamed and having family members turn on them for their poor investment choice.
Torres said Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one.” She said he “has called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him.”
The judge ordered Guo to forfeit $US889 million in restitution.
Wei Chen, a victim who testified at trial, told Torres that Guo’s fraud “destroyed my life” and that of her family.
As Guo left the courtroom after the sentencing, supporters applauded and shouted toward him.
Before his arrest and detention without bail three years ago, Guo grew so close to conservative political strategist Steve Bannon that they announced a joint initiative to overthrow the Chinese government in 2020. He lived in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park and had joined President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida golf club.
Prosecutors had requested he serve at least 30 years in prison, saying his “astonishing” fraud from 2018 to 2023 “destroyed hundreds of lives” and left “a wreckage of victims and families who have been devastated financially, emotionally, and psychologically.”
Prosecutors said in court papers that his ill-gotten riches fuelled “a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings.”
“The reason I came to the US was to destroy the CCP.”
Guo Wengui
Guo was convicted of nine of 12 criminal charges during a seven-week trial that prosecutors said showcased his deception of thousands of investors in bogus deals that enabled Guo’s lavish lifestyle.
In a court filing, Guo’s lawyers wrote that he was the victim of the Chinese Communist Party’s “grand, pervasive, and life-threatening” pursuit of him. They alleged that the party recruited elites in US business, entertainment and politics to conspire against him.
They said in pre-sentence court papers that a lengthy prison term would only validate China’s smear campaign and “embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life” while defendants in similar cases received prison terms of two-to-four years.
The lawyers noted that a court probation officer wrote to the sentencing judge that Guo, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, had scars and disfigurements from physical torture he endured in China and subsequent surgeries he underwent from 1993 to 2022 to repair the injuries.
Defence lawyers said Guo’s wealth grew as his family became the largest shareholder of China’s largest publicly traded securities company, but he became a target of Chinese government officials as he exposed them as corrupt. Eventually, the lawyers wrote, Guo moved to Hong Kong, London and then New York in 2017.
Chinese authorities accused him of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other crimes, but Guo said those allegations were false.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they had noted the sentencing, and that Guo is wanted by the Chinese government and has an Interpol “Red Notice” on him. The notice is a request to police forces around the world to arrest a suspect, pending extradition.
Guo, the government alleged in pre-sentence court papers, was “entirely unrepentant” for his crimes after he took advantage of lax US asylum laws to flourish in America.
AP, Bloomberg
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