Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui sentenced to 30 years in US prison for fraud

A Manhattan federal judge sentenced Guo Wengui to 30 years in prison for defrauding over 1,000 victims of hundreds of millions of dollars. He was ordered to forfeit $889 million in restitution.

Self-exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui handed 30-year sentence in New York fraud case

Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese billionaire who once ranked among China's wealthiest men, was sentenced Monday to 30 years in a US federal prison for a large-scale financial fraud, according to npr.org. Judge Analisa Torres, presiding at Manhattan federal court, said the scheme cost more than 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars.

Torres said Guo had "preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China," taking their money to fund a lavish personal lifestyle. She ordered him to forfeit $889 million in restitution. The judge also read excerpts from victim letters describing lost life savings, severe anxiety, shame, and fractured family relationships.

Wei Chen, a victim who had testified at trial, told the court that Guo's fraud "destroyed my life" and that of her family. As Guo was led out of the courtroom after sentencing, a group of supporters in attendance applauded and shouted toward him.

Guo disputes illness claims before sentencing

Before the sentence was handed down, Guo addressed the court through an interpreter, protesting his treatment in jail. He said he had been taken to the hospital earlier that morning and disputed a prosecutor's characterisation of him as a malingerer faking illness. "When I came here, I said: 'I have a tummy ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don't feel well,'" he told the court, adding that he had repeatedly vomited before being brought in. He was seen wiping his mouth with a tissue during proceedings.

He briefly addressed the criminal case itself, defending his stated purpose: "The reason I came to the U.S. was to destroy the CCP."

Torres was unmoved. She said Guo "takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one," adding that he had "called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him."

A billion-dollar scheme spanning five years

Prosecutors said Guo's fraud ran from 2018 to 2023 and was "astonishing" in scale, having "destroyed hundreds of lives" and left "a wreckage of victims and families who have been devastated financially, emotionally, and psychologically." They had requested a sentence of at least 30 years.

According to prosecutors, Guo convinced hundreds of thousands of people to invest more than $1 billion in total in entities he controlled, including GTV Media Group Inc., the Himalaya Farm Alliance, and the Himalaya Exchange. The ill-gotten funds, prosecutors said in court papers, fuelled "a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings."

Guo was convicted on nine of 12 criminal charges following a seven-week trial in which prosecutors argued he had deceived thousands of investors through bogus deals.

Defence: victim of Chinese Communist Party persecution

Guo's lawyers argued in court filings that their client was himself a victim — of a "grand, pervasive, and life threatening" pursuit by the Chinese Communist Party. They alleged the party had recruited influential figures in US business, entertainment and politics to conspire against him, and warned that a lengthy prison term would "embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life."

The defence noted that defendants in similar cases had received sentences of two to four years, and that a court probation officer had documented scars and disfigurements from torture Guo allegedly endured in China, with surgeries continuing from 1993 to 2022.

According to his lawyers, Guo's wealth initially grew as his family became the largest shareholder of China's largest publicly traded securities company. He later became a target of Chinese officials after exposing corruption, eventually relocating from Hong Kong to London and then to New York in 2017. Chinese authorities accused him of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other crimes; Guo denied all of those allegations.

Ties to Steve Bannon and US conservative circles

Before his arrest and detention without bail three years ago, Guo had cultivated close ties to conservative political strategist Steve Bannon. In 2020, the two announced a joint initiative aimed at overthrowing the Chinese government. Guo had been living in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park and had become a member of President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida.

The government alleged in presentence papers that Guo was "entirely unrepentant" for his crimes and had exploited US asylum laws to build his US-based platform. He is also known by the names Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok.

Source: Google News MT — Crime (en)