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Chinese Fugitive Guo Wengui Amasses War Chest to Battle Beijing
Guo Wengui said he has set aside $150 million to advance his campaign against the Communist Party and fight Beijing’s attempts to discredit him
Guo Wengui said he has set aside $150 million to advance his campaign against the Communist Party and fight Beijing’s attempts to discredit him
By Cezary Podkul in New York and Chun Han Wong in Beijing
Oct. 3, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET
Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman living in New York who has accused some of China’s leaders of corruption and other misdeeds, said he has prepared a war chest to advance his vocal campaign against the Communist Party and fight Beijing’s attempts to discredit him.
Mr. Guo, who last month applied for political asylum in the U.S., told The Wall Street Journal he has set aside over $150 million for legal fees and other expenses that he expects to incur over the next few years as he battles defamation and other lawsuits and steps up his antigovernment rhetoric.
“Nothing can stop me,” Mr. Guo said in an interview in his luxury apartment overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park recently. He said he is confident the U.S. will grant him asylum and will confront what he called Chinese government efforts to “silence” him.
“The U.S. is the last land of justice,” Mr. Guo said. “I would not be alive were it not for the U.S.”
Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui spoke to The Wall Street Journal at the Sherry-Netherland hotel in Manhattan, where he lives.PHOTO: NATALIE KEYSSAR FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mr. Guo—who also calls himself Miles Kwok —is a self-made Chinese property tycoon who has lived in the U.S. since 2015. He has said he fled China after learning that a state-security official he had ties to was going to be detained as part of a government anticorruption campaign.
Over the past nine months, Mr. Guo has captivated some politically minded Chinese citizens and vexed the Chinese government with a barrage of tweets, online videos and social-media posts alleging corrupt links between China’s political and corporate elites. He has pledged to release documents detailing Chinese politicians’ wealth and ownership of luxury real estate overseas—information he claims to have obtained through past work with Chinese state security and private investigators he hired to explore leads.
Mr. Guo has stepped up his attacks in recent weeks. He recently wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Times criticizing the “leviathan Chinese Mafia state” and made plans to give a speech Wednesday at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank. He said he will talk about China’s political ambitions and the impact of Chinese investments on U.S. national security. “China is at a very dangerous crossroads now,” Mr. Guo said.
Beijing has dismissed Mr. Guo’s allegations as falsehoods and seeks his arrest.Chinese courts have jailed and fined some of Mr. Guo’s former subordinates for crimes including fraud and embezzlement. Chinese media have published articles portraying him as unscrupulous.
Many of Mr. Guo’s allegations are hard to independently verify. Even his age—he told the Journal that he was likely born in 1967 or 1968—has been a matter of some debate, as he previously said he was born in 1970. Yet his allegations have the potential to intrude upon the ruling Communist Party’s plans for a carefully choreographed leadership transition this month.
At the twice-a-decade congress, Beijing’s ruling elite will name President Xi Jinping’s new leadership bench for the next five years. Mr. Guo’s attacks on certain high-ranking officials could affect behind-the-scenes jostling among senior officials vying for promotions and key positions.
In August, Chinese officials told the Associated Press that Mr. Guo was being investigated in at least 19 major criminal cases that involve bribery, kidnapping, fraud, money laundering and rape. Several Chinese companies and individuals have recently sued Mr. Guo in U.S. courts. Among the pending cases against Mr. Guo is a defamation suit from acquisitive conglomerate HNA Group Co., which he has accused of having ties to a high-ranking Chinese official in the Communist Party. Another civil case was filed in New York by a Chinese woman who has accused Mr. Guo of raping her when she worked as his personal assistant.
Guo Wengui PHOTO: NATALIE KEYSSAR FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mr. Guo denied the allegations, saying the they were part of a misinformation campaign being waged by Chinese officials.
“It has nothing to do with who I am and what I have done. They haven’t publicly disputed anything that I have disclosed so far,” Mr. Guo said, referring to the Chinese government. Sipping tea in a long black Chinese gown next to a fireplace in his apartment adorned with a Lego brick model of the London bridge, he challenged his detractors to produce evidence that he is wrong.
Mr. Guo’s supporters say Beijing is trying to frustrate his efforts to reach audiences in China. Several recent disruptions to the WhatsApp messaging service in China coincided with Mr. Guo’s live video broadcasts and interviews with U.S.-based Chinese media. The Cyberspace Administration of China has said “all companies are responsible for blocking illegal information, and so is WhatsApp.”
Over the weekend, a Facebook account used by Mr. Guo was taken down. A person familiar with the matter said Facebook disabled the account because it was used to share personal-identification information, in violation of terms of service barring unauthorized disclosure of such data.
Asked about the disabling, Mr. Guo said he believed it was the work of his opponents, and called the move “despicable” in a Twitter post.
—Alyssa Abkowitz in Beijing contributed to this article.
