Guo Wengui (; born May 10, 1970—self claim or October 5, 1968), also known as Ho Wan Kwok (), Miles Guo, and Miles Kwok, is an exiled Chinese businessman. In 2014, Guo ranked 74th on the Hurun China Rich List with estimated assets of US$2.6 billion. Later that year, he left China for the United States amid an anti-corruption crackdown that targeted his associates, including top intelligence official Ma Jian. In the U.S., Guo developed a public profile as a self-described dissident and whistleblower against the Chinese Communist Party. Between 2018 and 2020, Guo and Steve Bannon launched media ventures including G News and GTV Media Group, which were criticized for spreading misinformation.
In 2021, Guo reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission involving US$539 million in refunds and penalties over illegal fundraising. In March 2023, Guo was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges of defrauding investors and supporters. In July 2024, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found him guilty on fraud and money-laundering-related charges. On June 29, 2026, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Biography
Guo was born in Shen County, Shandong, China. He is the seventh of eight children. He began his business career in Zhengzhou, before moving to Beijing to secure various construction deals during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2006, he delivered a Beijing deputy mayor's sex tape to the police. The deputy mayor, who had contested one of Guo's land deals, was subsequently imprisoned, allowing Guo to build the Pangu Plaza.
In 2014, Guo departed China after one of his political connections faced arrest. He moved to the United States in 2015. Guo, long prominent in real estate development and investment circles, came to fame in 2015 after a lengthy investigative report by Caixin media, controlled by Hu Shuli, was released, detailing Guo's political connections, business dealings, and hardball tactics against former rivals.
Guo responded by claiming Hu defamed him and responded with a set of personal accusations against Hu, claiming Hu had a romantic entanglement with his business rival. He opened a Twitter account in early 2017, frequently criticizing individuals within the Chinese establishment. He has reserved particular scorn for He Jintao, the son of former Central Commission for Discipline Inspection secretary He Guoqiang.
Many officials with whom he was said to have ties have fallen under the dragnet of the anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping, including Ma Jian, the former deputy director of Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), and Zhang Yue, the former Political and Legal Affairs Secretary of Hebei. While generally supportive of General Secretary Xi Jinping, Guo has characterized parts of the corruption campaign as a political witch hunt.
From the beginning of 2017, Guo is in self-imposed exile in New York City, where he owns an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, overlooking Central Park. He has continued to promote a political agenda bringing attention to corruption in the Chinese political system from his New York home. In November 2018, Guo put his 15 room apartment up for sale for US$67 million, despite having paid US$67.5 million in cash for it in 2015; previous attempts to sell for US$86 million in October 2015 and US$78 million in 2016 yielded no buyers.
Guo is a member of U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and Mark's Club in Mayfair, London.
Since January 23, 2017, Guo accepted multiple interviews with media such as Mingjing, Voice of America (VOA) and BBC. Guo also started a campaign of accusing Chinese officials of corruption through live monologues on his YouTube and Twitter channel. On April 20, Guo's 3-hour live interview with VOA was abruptly terminated by the latter. Newspapers such as The New York Times, Financial Times, and Forbes also reported about Guo and his campaign. One of Guo's targets, HNA Group, sued Guo for defamation in June 2017.
In August 2018, several Hong Kong media, such as Ming Pao and South China Morning Post reported that Hong Kong Police had frozen the assets of the Guo family, accused of money laundering under the name of Guo's daughter Guo Mei. In March 2019, his mother died in China.
The book War for Eternity by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum details Guo's collaboration with Steve Bannon and the latter's attempt to undermine the Chinese government. On June 3, 2020 (the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre), while aboard Guo's yacht in New York City waterways, he and Steve Bannon participated in an event declaring a "New Federal State of China", a political movement that "would overthrow the Chinese government". In New York City, planes were seen carrying banners which said "Congratulations to Federal State of New China!". In August 2020, Bannon was arrested by federal authorities during an early morning raid on Guo's $35 million luxury yacht, docked in Connecticut, under charges of stealing millions of dollars from the We Build the Wall non-profit organization.
In February 2022 Guo filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. In a filing for the bankruptcy, Guo estimated that his total assets are currently worth between $50,001 and $100,000, while his liabilities range between $100 million and $500 million.
Beijing Zenith Holdings Beijing Zenith Holdings () was a company owned in 2013 by Li Lin and Jiang Yuehua via two corporate entities ( and ). The company acquired a minority stake in PKU Healthcare from state-owned Founder Group's PKU Healthcare Group. However, Beijing Zenith Holdings allegedly failed to pay PKU Healthcare Group after the shares were already transferred. To finalize the payment, Beijing Zenith Holdings allegedly borrowed the money from PKU Resources Group Holdings, a sister company of PKU Healthcare Group. All three companies were fined by the China Securities Regulatory Commission in 2016.
In 2015, Chinese media reported that Zenith Holdings was actually owned by Guo Wengui, and Li Lin and Jiang Yuehua were his proxies.
Zenith Holdings also acquired a minority stake in Founder Securities by underwriting the new shares.
In October 2018, Zenith Holdings was fined CNY 60 billion for irregularity in acquiring the securities company. In its ruling, the court in Dalian found that Beijing Zenith had made RMB 11.9 billion in illegal profits.
Chinese documents On October 5, 2017, Guo made public in Washington a so-called "confidential document of the Chinese government" with the self-proclaimed verification of the U.S. government, featuring China's "working plan of secretly dispatching 27 police officers" to the United States on field duty in 2017.
Criminal charges in China In April 2017, an Interpol notice was issued for Guo's arrest, requested by the Chinese government. In June 2017, staff of one of Guo's other investment vehicles, Pangu Investment, were charged for scamming banks on loans. The staff members accused all alleged that they were under the orders of Guo.
By June 2017, the Chinese government sent U.S. President Donald Trump a letter, delivered by casino businessman Steve Wynn, requesting for Guo to be deported to China. Unnamed sources "familiar with [a] meeting" allege that Trump was inclined to deport Guo, a member of his Mar-a-Lago resort, but that his advisors opposed deporting him by reasoning that he could be used for political leverage against China.
Twitter campaign against Guo
A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute which analysed the tweets of Chinese government controlled accounts banned by Twitter in response to the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests found that the accounts had distributed more material attacking Guo Wengui than any other target including the Hong Kong protestors. Other dissidents targeted by the bot network included Gui Minhai and Yu Wensheng as well as PLA veterans. In another report from the South China Morning Post, the researchers found that more than 38,000 tweets from 618 of the now-suspended Twitter accounts targeted Guo.
Civil lawsuits Several companies sued Guo's Pangu Investment and Zenith Holdings in the civil court of the United States, in order to reclaim the non-performing loan the companies allegedly lent to Guo.
In April 2017, Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund brought suit against Guo in the Commercial Division of New York County, where Guo resided and was seeking asylum from the United States government. In 2008, Pacific Alliance loaned $30 million to Guo's Hong Kong company in connection with the development of Pangu Plaza, site of a "7 Star Hotel" in Beijing near the Olympic arenas. In connection with the loan, Guo signed a personal guarantee. All of the documents and transactions were executed in Hong Kong or China. According to Pacific Alliance, Guo owes approximately $88 million in principal and accrued interest on the loan. In 2020, an apartment worth $55 million that an investment fund bought for Guo's use was seized in a bankruptcy proceeding in connection with the lawsuit.
In July 2017, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing sued Guo for defamation after he alleged that she had slept with CCP leader Wang Qishan.
On July 5, 2017, a police agency in central China opened a rape investigation against Guo, after a 28-year-old woman accused Guo of verbal, physical and sexual abuse, saying he had repeatedly raped her during trips to London, New York, and the Bahamas between 2015 and 2017, while she worked as his personal assistant. She alleged that Guo had kept her in "virtual detention" by taking away her passport, restricting and monitoring her internet usage as well as access to electronic devices, repeatedly threatening her, and confining her to an apartment in London's Belgravia district, also stating that Guo coerced other female employees into having sex with him. The woman provided testimony to a lawyer, presenting underwear, pregnancy tests, and abortion pills as proof, before asking for further assistance at the Embassy of China, London. The Associated Press reported on the development in August 2017, also confirming that the Chinese government sought a second Interpol notice for the case. Guo and his legal team initially declined to comment until the woman filed a civil lawsuit at the New York Supreme Court in September of the same year, seeking US$140,000,000 in compensation. Guo subsequently called the allegations "fake" and described them as part of a smear campaign against him by the Chinese Communist Party. As of 2020, China still sought custody of Guo for rape charges. The plaintiff in the rape case repeated her allegations in a deposition on June 3, 2021, with the case still pending as of 2024. Also in 2024, public affairs consultant Sam Nunberg stated that Guo's close associate Steve Bannon threatened him with legal action after he refused to defend Guo by claiming to have evidence that the rape allegation was fabricated by Bruno Wu, Steve Wynn and Elliott Broidy, a narrative which Nunberg described as "totally false" and instead based on animosity towards Wu as a business rival and Wynn and Broidy for supporting Guo's extradition to China in 2017. Guo had filed a defamation suit against Nunberg shortly after his refusal, which was dismissed in 2018.