MANHATTAN (CN) — The Chinese exile accused of scamming his own followers out of more than $1 billion was almost certainly a target of the Chinese Communist Party, a defense witness testified Wednesday at the trial of Guo Wengui.
Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, is standing trial on charges that he defrauded his supporters with sham investment opportunities related to his many businesses and projects. His anti-communist advocacy has earned him praise from prominent figures on the American Right, such as Trump White House advisor-turned-convict Steve Bannon, who started the video platform GTV with Guo in 2020.
For the past six weeks, federal prosecutors have been building their case that Guo used that advocacy against the CCP to cultivate loyal fans before bilking them for cash. Now, Guo is presenting his side of the story to Manhattan jurors after the prosecution rested its case earlier this week.
Guo holds that the CCP is retaliating against him through, among other things, this very criminal prosecution. According to Guo, his advocacy against the party isn’t mere pandering to raise money online, it’s a genuine effort to topple a corrupt institution that is after him personally.
The exiled Chinese businessman on Wednesday elicited testimony from security expert Paul Doran in an effort to drive that point home.
“In my professional opinion, Miles Guo is public enemy number one in China,” Doran told the court.
The London-based Doran spent four years in Shanghai, China as a regional director of security for pharmaceutical giant Novartis. Calling on that experience, he testified that he believed Guo to be a target of Operation Fox Hunt, a Chinese initiative started in 2014 that was advertised as a global hunt for fugitives.
Doran said that the operation is actually a robust, opaque search by CCP agents seeking to silence critics of the Chinese government. He testified that he believed Operation Fox Hunt to have tens of thousands of agents and an “unlimited budget.”
Believing there to be thousands of targets of the operation, Doran said there may not be a bigger focus than Guo.
“[He] exposed corruption, advocated for democracy and freedom in China, which is intolerable for the CCP,” Doran said.
Guo’s lawyers used this testimony to justify some of their client’s suspicious behavior, such as his frequent use of burner phones and encrypted messaging. Doran said that, as a security expert, he would expect nothing less from a man in the crosshairs of the CCP.
“It would be good security risk management practice for Mr. Guo to have multiple burner phones,” Doran said, saying the same for a security detail and multiple bank accounts.
Guo’s defense has been that the CCP is pulling out all the stops to silence him, including pressuring some of his investors to falsely complain to U.S. regulators, prompting his indictment and the slew of investor witnesses who testified against Guo so far.
Though prosecutors have worried Guo’s argument will suggest that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is working as an arm of the CCP to nab him, defense attorneys insisted this isn’t the case, though.
“For the umpteenth time, the defense reiterates that it does not intend to argue to the jury that the prosecution team in this case or the U.S. Attorney’s Office in general are acting as agents of a foreign power,” Guo’s lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju wrote in a letter to the court earlier this week. “But that is entirely different from arguing that the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to silence Mr. Guo through a number of different methods."
Still, Doran agreed that Guo’s potential status as a CCP target wouldn’t excuse his supposed conduct in the federal indictment.
On cross examination, Doran revealed that he was also pursued by the CCP during his time in China. Despite that, he said that he never raised money on the backs of lies or committed fraud, as Guo is accused of doing.
“Being targeted by the CCP doesn’t give you the right to do those things, right?” prosecutor Ryan Finkel asked Doran.
Doran agreed that it does not.
Guo is criminally charged with racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, international money laundering and other counts. If convicted, he could face a more than 200-year prison sentence or be deported back to China, where he is wanted on accusations of rape, kidnapping and bribery.
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