Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui convicted at US fraud trial
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Guo Wengui was convicted on nine of the 12 criminal counts he faced, including racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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NEW YORK – Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman and outspoken opponent of Beijing’s communist government, was convicted on July 16 in his US trial on charges of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from online followers.
Guo was convicted on nine of the 12 criminal counts he faced, including racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud, in a trial that lasted seven weeks.
He could face decades in prison. US District Judge Analisa Torres set his sentencing for Nov 19.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Guo raised more than US$1 billion (S$1.34 billion) by guaranteeing followers on social media that they would not lose money if they joined him in a series of investment and cryptocurrency schemes from 2018 to 2023, some of which he said would go towards challenging China’s government.
Prosecutors say the one-time real estate mogul spent the money on luxury goods, including a New Jersey mansion, a red Lamborghini and a yacht.
“Thousands of Guo’s online followers were victimised so that Guo could live a life of excess,” Mr Damian Williams, the US attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement after the verdict.
Guo’s defence lawyers portrayed him as an ardent dissident who flaunted his wealth as part of his political critique of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and said jurors should not rush to judgment as prosecutors had.
“Guo didn’t care about the money,” defence lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju said in his closing argument last week. “He cared about the movement.”
After Mr Kamaraju spoke, prosecutor Juliana Murray told jurors that the defence lawyer was correct that Guo cared about the anti-CCP movement.
“And at least one of the reasons he loved it is because it was his personal piggy bank,” Ms Murray said.
During his closing argument last week, prosecutor Ryan Finkel played videos of Guo pitching investments, including several in which Guo wore sunglasses and stood on a yacht deck.
Earlier in the trial, jurors were allowed to hold keys to the Lamborghini that the authorities found in a garage on Guo’s Connecticut estate.
Mr Kamaraju argued that the New Jersey mansion and Lamborghini were not Guo’s personal property, but rather amenities available for the use of his followers belonging to a luxury membership club.
Guo has been jailed since his March 2023 arrest.
Mr Finkel also showed jurors a video of Steve Bannon, a one-time adviser to former US president Donald Trump, promoting one of Guo’s ventures at a press conference in 2018.
Bannon was arrested in August 2020 on Guo’s yacht, the Lady May, in an unrelated fraud case and was later pardoned by Trump. REUTERS
