Chinese Billionaire Backing Steve Bannon and Gettr Files For Bankruptcy
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Guo Wengui, the billionaire backer behind Steve Bannon and right-wing social media company Gettr, filed for bankruptcy this week.
Guo, who lives in exile and also goes by Miles Kwok, was recently ordered to pay $134 million to a creditor after he moved his yacht into international waters to avoid making payments related to the vessel.
Bannon, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump, was arrested on that very same yacht in August of 2020 by federal agents and booked into jail on fraud charges. While Guo had nothing to do with Bannon’s arrest, he continued to back Bannon’s media ventures.
Guo was reportedly worth some $1.1 billion in 2015 and lived in a Fifth Avenue penthouse valued at $68 million – he listed the property for $45 million on Wednesday.
Guo reportedly signed the documents officially declaring bankruptcy on camera and posted the video on Gettr. A foundation owned by Guo helped to finance Gettr, which has recently laid off many of its employees.
Bannon has been on Guo’s payroll since 2018. Axios reported that “Guo Media, a company linked to a controversial Chinese billionaire, has contracted Bannon for at least $1 million for “strategic consulting services,” according to contracts obtained by Axios.”
Axios described Guo at the time, writing he is “a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party and is reportedly a member at Mar-a-Lago. He’s on China’s most-wanted list for alleged bribery, fraud, and money laundering, per the New York Times (he strongly denies the allegations).”
How Guo made his fortune is also up for debate as NBC News notes that real-estate developers in China are ofter linked to the Chinese Communist Party – of which Guo is a fierce critic.
NBC reported in August 2020 on Guo’s mysterious back story:
As a New York Times magazine profile pointed out in 2018, that timeline doesn’t appear to explain why Guo spent the next two decades growing rich in China through real estate development, a business that typically requires close cooperation with government officials even in democracies, let alone an authoritarian state like China. In nearly three decades after his brother’s death, there is no record of Guo taking a public stand against the party he says caused it, the Times wrote.
There are darker allegations against Guo than hypocrisy, however. A lawsuit filed in New York state by a 28-year-old Chinese woman says Guo lured her to the U.S. from China to work as his assistant and then kept her prisoner for three years, repeatedly assaulting and raping her. The suit says she escaped while in London and went to the Chinese embassy, and that she filed a criminal complaint with Chinese authorities.
