“The reason I came to the US was to destroy the CCP,” Guo Wengui told a Manhattan courtroom on Monday, shortly before Judge Analisa Torres sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
Guo, a self-exiled Chinese tycoon once believed to be among the country’s wealthiest men, was convicted of nine of 12 charges after a seven-week trial. Torres said his fraud cost more than 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars. She ordered him to forfeit $889 million in restitution.
Supporters packed the courtroom. As Guo was led out, they applauded and shouted toward him.
What the judge said
Torres said Guo “preyed on those seeking to bring Democracy to China” and took their money so he could live lavishly. She read from letters sent by victims, who described losing their life savings, feeling anxious and ashamed, and watching relatives turn on them over a poor investment. Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions,” she said, “and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one.” She also said he had called on supporters to harass and intimidate people who spoke out against him.
Wei Chen, a victim who testified at trial, told the judge the fraud “destroyed my life” and her family’s.
Prosecutors had asked for at least 30 years. They called the fraud, which ran from 2018 to 2023, “astonishing” and said it “destroyed hundreds of lives.” They said the money paid for “mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings.” According to prosecutors, Guo persuaded hundreds of thousands of people to put more than $1 billion into entities he controlled, among them GTV Media Group Inc., the Himalaya Farm Alliance and the Himalaya Exchange.
Guo’s response
Before sentencing, Guo complained about his treatment in jail. He said he had been taken to the hospital early Monday and rejected a prosecutor’s suggestion that he was faking illness. “I have a tummy ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel well,” he said he told staff on arriving at court, speaking through an interpreter. He barely touched on the case itself.
His lawyers argued in court filings that the Chinese Communist Party had pursued him in a “grand, pervasive, and life threatening” campaign, and that it had recruited elites in US business, entertainment and politics to work against him. A long sentence, they wrote, would validate China’s smear campaign and “embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life.” They noted that defendants in similar cases received two to four years. A probation officer, they added, had told the judge Guo bore scars from torture in China and from surgeries between 1993 and 2022.
The defense said Guo’s family became the largest shareholder of China’s largest publicly traded securities company, and that he became a target after exposing officials as corrupt. He moved to Hong Kong, then London, then New York in 2017. Chinese authorities have accused him of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other crimes. Guo says the allegations are false.
Prosecutors said Guo was “entirely unrepentant” and had exploited lax US asylum laws to flourish in America.
The Bannon connection
Before his arrest and detention without bail three years ago, Guo grew close to conservative strategist Steve Bannon, and in 2020 the two announced a joint initiative to overthrow the Chinese government. Guo lived in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park and joined President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
