AP, NEW YORK
A self-exiled billionaire Chinese business tycoon once believed to be among China’s wealthiest men was on Monday sentenced to 30 years in a US prison for a massive financial fraud that a federal judge said cost more than 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars.Guo Wengui (郭文貴), who fled China a decade ago and reinvented himself as a US-based critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was sentenced in a Manhattan courtroom packed with his supporters by Judge Analisa Torres.She said he “preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China,” taking their money so he could live lavishly.
A Twitter page of Chinese exiled businessman Guo Wengui is displayed on a computer screen in Beijing on Aug. 30, 2017.
Before he was sentenced, Guo protested his treatment in jail, saying he was taken to the hospital early on Monday. 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.“The reason I came to the US was to destroy the CCP,” he said.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.Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one,” Torres said.He “has called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him,” she said.The judge ordered Guo to forfeit US$889 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 at 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 US 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 fueled “a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings.”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 CCP’s “grand, pervasive and life threatening” pursuit of him. They said that the party recruited elites in US business, entertainment and politics to conspire against him.They said in presentence 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.
