Guo Wengui is suspected of scamming thousands of individuals out of $1 billion through investment schemes
US arrests Chinese billionaire
FILE PHOTO: Guo Wengui in 2018. © DON EMMERT / AFP
The US government has charged fugitive Chinese businessman Guo Wengui with conspiracy to defraud investors. The tycoon allegedly scammed hundreds of thousands of online followers by luring them with his anti-Beijing rhetoric into investing money in his businesses, US officials say.
The indictments against the entrepreneur and business partner Kin Ming Je were unsealed on Wednesday. He was identified in legal papers under the name Ho Wan Kwok and five aliases, including ‘Brother Seven’, ‘The Principal’, but is best-known as Guo Wengui.
Both men were charged with wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, while his business partner was additionally charged with obstruction of justice. They are facing several decades in prison.
Guo was arrested on Wednesday morning and pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan federal court. His associate remains at large.
The Chinese businessman “led a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of over $1 billion dollars,” US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams stated.
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A vocal critic of the Chinese government, Guo resided in the US since around 2015. He used purported nonprofit organizations to spread his political messages to accumulate a substantial online following. He then exploited the trust that he gained to cheat his followers out of money with promises of “outsized” investment returns, according to the allegations.
Guo is also a business associate of Steve Bannon, a former adviser to ex-US President Donald Trump. The two were in the media business together. In 2020, Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht, the Lady May, in an unrelated fraud case. Trump pardoned Bannon in the last days of his presidency.
The charges against Guo echo those he faced in his home country, where he was a real estate mogul before leaving in 2014. The Chinese authorities accused him of bribery and embezzlement, and placed him on an international wanted list through Interpol in 2017. Guo claimed to be a whistleblower seeking to expose Beijing’s wrongdoings.
Volker Turk has warned that efforts to advance reparatory justice are facing resistance in “certain quarters,” and urged countries to back Africa’s push.
Reparatory justice for historical crimes, including colonialism, enslavement, and the trade in enslaved Africans, is crucial to dismantling systemic racism, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has said.
Speaking at the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent on Tuesday, Turk linked present-day discrimination against people from the continent to the enduring legacy of colonialism and enslavement.
”Racism and dehumanizing rhetoric continue to permeate public institutions, communities, and online platforms,” he said, according to the UN Press Service. Turk noted that “digital technologies, including AI, are reproducing and amplifying existing biases against people of African descent.”
The remarks come weeks after the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade “the gravest...
The US VP had to defend President Trump’s Gaza policy at a rally on a Georgia college campus.
US Vice President J.D. Vance was forced to defend Washington’s policy in Gaza after he was booed and heckled at a key MAGA event on Wednesday.
Co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is a conservative student group that has long been seen as a strong support base of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement but is now showing apparent cracks.
Less than 15 minutes into a TPUSA event at the University of Georgia on Wednesday, Vance was interrupted by hecklers over US policy in Gaza, with one audience member shouting, “Jesus Christ does not support genocide!” As he attempted to respond, others shouted, “You’re killing children!” and “You’re bombing children!”
Vance replied by referring to Trump’s achievements as president, including securing a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, something he said the previous administration of Joe Biden failed to do.
“I ...
Sergey Shoigu has cautioned Finland and the Baltic states against allowing Kiev to use their airspace for attacks on Russia.
Russia would have the right to retaliate if Finland and the Baltic states are deliberately allowing Ukrainian drones to pass through their airspace, Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said on Thursday.
“Recently, there has been an increase in Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia via Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia,” Shoigu told journalists. “As a result, civilians are suffering and significant damage is being caused to civilian infrastructure.”
Either Western air defenses are proving ineffective, or these four countries “deliberately provide their airspace, thereby becoming open accomplices in aggression against Russia,” he added. In the latter case, Moscow has the right to self-defense in response to an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the security chief stressed.
In recent weeks, Kiev has intensified drone strikes on ...
