From penthouse to prison cell: the law catches up with billionaire associate of Steve Bannon

Luc Despins, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, typically took on difficult jobs: After the energy company Enron collapsed years ago, he helped thousands of victims recover some of their money.

But when Despins was appointed by a bankruptcy court last year to locate the assets of Guo Wengui, a Chinese property mogul and political provocateur who had failed to repay tens of millions of dollars to a hedge fund, the assignment presented very different challenges.

In November, protesters appeared outside his home and that of his ex-wife. Photographs of his daughters, along with their names and employers, were posted on Gettr, a social platform catering to the American right. A video online accused Despins of helping to build concentration camps on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Protesters even entered his office lobby, Despins testified in court.

“Partners of the firm have been chased up the escalator, with people running — screaming, you know, ‘CCP dog,‘” he said.

Guo Wengui, seated centre, pleaded not guilty in federal court in New York last month.Credit: AP

It would be among the last of many harassment campaigns carried out in Guo’s name by his global legion of followers. Guo may now be at the end of a remarkable trajectory, from billionaire Beijing insider to fugitive critic of the Chinese Communist Party and ally of Trump Republicans. That path, fuelled by bravado, ruthlessness, a keen political antenna and alleged theft, has left lingering suspicion about his allegiances. And it has now taken him from his Manhattan penthouse to his new place of residence: the Brooklyn federal detention centre.

Last month, Guo was arrested in that 9,000-square-foot apartment, charged with defrauding thousands of investors in the United States and overseas of more than $1 billion. If convicted, he could face decades in prison. Guo pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court and was ordered detained at the request of prosecutors, who described him as a flight risk and a danger to the community.

“Guo Wengui is such a grifter, he just understands that whatever system you are in you have to learn how to play it,” said Orville Schell, director of the Centre on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, who met Guo in Beijing over a decade ago. “He had yachts, he had the whole panoply — he knew how to arrange things around him that created a sense of awe, success and invincibility.”

Guo’s lawyer, Stephen Cook, declined to comment.

Guo rose from poverty to control a nationwide property empire centred on a $1 billion office, retail, hotel and residential complex next to the site of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He lived in a sprawling lakeside courtyard compound in central Beijing valued at up to $230 million, with a separate barracks for his uniformed guards.

Property empires in China rely on government connections and the free flow of cash, gifts and favours, and Guo’s links reached into the upper ranks of the country’s power structure, including Ma Jian, a senior intelligence official.

The Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui used a recommendation from Tony Blair to buy his apartment with sweeping views over Central Park.Credit: NYT

But by early 2015, a Chinese anti-corruption campaign, aimed at officials on the take from freewheeling billionaires, had ensnared Ma. In a country where the fall of a patron often puts his confidants in legal jeopardy, Guo fled before he too could be arrested, entering the United States on a tourist visa.

In New York, Guo was by 2017 holding court at his $68 million residence at the Sherry-Netherland with sweeping Central Park views. While buying the apartment, he provided the building’s co-op board a recommendation from former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

Guo became a hero to tens of thousands of people in the Chinese diaspora with his insider accounts of alleged corruption among top Communist Party officials.

He also began working to connect with America’s powerful. By then he was a member of Mar-a-Lago, then-President Donald Trump’s Florida club. When in Washington, he booked rooms at the Trump International Hotel.

To fend off China, Guo applied for political asylum in September 2017 and moved closer into Trump circles, embracing views held by the president and the American far right. Guo soon won the support of influential Trump allies, and they won access to his money.

In late 2018 Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime chief strategist, became chair of the Rule of Law Fund, billed as a $100 million effort financed by Guo to disseminate information about Communist Party corruption and to help its victims.

Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui announcing the launch of their venture.

“We both naturally despise the Chinese Communist Party,” Guo told the Times then. “That’s why we’ve become partners.” Bannon said of his new backer: “He really impressed me.” Their relationship deepened, with Guo lending Bannon $150,000 and later offering him a $1 million consulting contract, according to Axios.

In August 2020, Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht, charged in Manhattan with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to an online campaign to help build a wall on the Mexican border, and of using large sums for personal expenses. Bannon pleaded not guilty and was later pardoned by Trump before trial.

While Guo was building an army of followers, he was also lashing out at perceived enemies. In Beijing, he had taken down a vice mayor blocking his property development by obtaining a videotape showing the married official having sex with another woman. When a magazine was investigating Guo, he accused its publisher of having a child out of wedlock with another of his opponents.

In the United States, Guo’s vengeance took many forms: lawsuits, social media attacks, and the dispatching of supporters to targets’ homes and workplaces.

According to a prosecutors’ memo seeking his detention, several victims told the government that after they complained to him about mishandling their money, he accused them of spying for the Chinese Communist Party, “effectively directing the wrath” of his base against them.

He was especially harsh toward Chinese dissidents, like Teng Biao, a legal scholar and human rights activist who was imprisoned in China and later fled. Teng was an early critic of Guo, who sued him for defamation in 2018; the case was ultimately dismissed.

“After watching him for 20 minutes I realised that this guy is just a swindler,” Teng said of Guo. “He’s not somebody who wants to fight for democracy or freedom in China. He just wants to use his influence and his impact to cheat people for money.”

Teng Biao was an early critic of Guo and was sued by him for defamation.Credit: NYT

In December 2020, Guo supporters surrounded Teng’s home in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, cursing at his school-age daughters and carrying signs that accused Teng of spying for the Chinese Communist Party. Guo supporters also gathered outside the homes of several other prominent Chinese rights activists. The protesters stayed for two months, Teng recalled.

At first, some Chinese activists in the United States, including Sasha Gong, a reporter, were taken with Guo’s message. But Gong later developed suspicions about his anti-Chinese Communist Party credentials because of his attacks on dissidents and the source of his funds. “I wrote Bannon that not a penny of Guo’s money was clean, don’t take a penny of it,” she said in an interview.

A Manhattan federal judge ruling in a civil case in which Gong testified reflected on how difficult it was to determine Guo’s loyalties. “The evidence at trial does not permit the court to decide whether Guo is, in fact, a dissident or a double agent,” the judge, Lewis J. Liman, wrote. If U.S. intelligence officials have any concerns, they haven’t resulted in charges.

In recent months, Guo has abandoned the buzz cut and clean shave that he long paired with his Brioni suits. He has grown his hair, along with a salt-and-pepper beard. Last week, someone saying she was his daughter, Guo Mei, posted on his Gettr account that he was in high spirits at the pretrial detention centre in Brooklyn. He was playing basketball to stay in shape.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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