Miami - A high-profile Chinese fugitive -who belongs to
President Donald Trump's exclusive South Florida club, Mar-a-Lago,
and has railed against China's communist government - is accused of
being a spy for that very regime, according to new documents filed in
a federal court case in New York.
Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who also goes by Miles Kwok, fled to
the United States four years ago after learning an associate had been
arrested on corruption charges. He is now one of China's most-wanted,
accused of myriad crimes by the Chinese government, including paying
bribes and sexual assault. He maintains his innocence, saying the
charges are politically motivated.
Guo, who made his money in real estate, has long promoted himself as
a dissident being hunted by the Chinese government for his opposition
to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. He is currently seeking
political asylum in the United States, where he reportedly avoided
deportation by the Trump administration after the president learned
Guo was a member of Mar-a-Lago.
Now, filings in a civil case, first reported by the Wall Street
Journal, suggest Guo may not be the dissident he claims. "Instead,
Guo Wengui was, and is, a dissident-hunter, propagandist, and agent
in the service of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese
Communist Party," according to federal court papers filed on Friday.
The Chinese spy allegations against Guo surfaced last week in a
contract dispute - rife with international and political intrigue -
between a Hong Kong-based company, Eastern Profit Corporation
Limited, and an Arlington, Virginia, research firm, Strategic Vision
US, LLC.
Guo denied the allegations through his attorney, saying the claim
"utterly lacks credibility."
"This lawsuit is about a contract between Eastern Profit and
Strategic. Strategic is now abusing the litigation privilege to
slander Mr. Guo," wrote Guo's attorney, Daniel Podhaskie, in a
response to the Miami Herald. He claimed the slander was retaliation
after Strategic's counterclaim was dismissed. Podhaskie pointed to
Guo's frozen assets in China as proof that he is not working with the
Communist Party.
In the lawsuit, Eastern Profit says it hired Strategic Vision last
year to investigate 15 unnamed individuals after holding several
meetings at Guo's ritzy apartment at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in
Manhattan. The research firm said it had considerable experience in
the field, citing probes of the personal lives of Republican
politicians, a Middle Eastern prince, and a Russian official in the
opposition party.
But Eastern claims that Strategic Vision failed to deliver the
private information on the 15 Chinese nationals operating in the
United States after being paid an initial 1 million dollars for the
promised "high-quality original research," according to the federal
suit filed last year in the Southern District of New York.
Strategic Vision, headed by CEO French Wallop, the widow of the late
Wyoming GOP Senator Malcolm Wallop, was fired by Eastern Profit in
February 2018 after the research firm provided information that was
mostly publicly available on the probe's targets, the suit says.
Eastern Profit demanded the return of its 1-million-dollar deposit
for the research work, accusing Strategic Vision of breaching their
contract.
Strategic filed a counterclaim not only against Eastern Profit but
also against Guo, alleging he is actually a Chinese government spy
whose "origin story is untrue."
In the counterclaim, Strategic Vision, called Guo a "representative"
of Eastern Profit, and accused the billionaire of giving the research
firm a thumb drive loaded with malware. Strategic claimed Guo was
seeking sensitive information on Chinese nationals who were actually
assisting the U.S. government's counter-intelligence efforts.
"Strategic Vision proved its counterclaim with mountains of publicly
available information," said the research firm's attorney, Edward
Greim, in a statement provided to the Miami Herald.
"(The evidence) showed that Mr. Guo was detained in China on the date
he claims to have arrived in the U.S. in early 2015, that he sent
hundreds of millions of dollars back and forth between China and the
U.S. for years after Chinese authorities supposedly starting seizing
his assets, and that he's used scores of lawsuits to engage in
seemingly sham disputes against Chinese regime-connected entities
while simultaneously filing very real lawsuits against legitimate
Chinese dissidents to destroy their reputations and drain their
finances."
The allegations against Guo - that he's some sort of double agent
uncovering real dissidents for the Chinese government - come as the
FBI continues to investigate possible Chinese espionage at
Mar-a-Lago. The ongoing federal probe gained new momentum when, on
March 30, Yujing Zhang, a 33-year-old Chinese national, was arrested
and charged with trespassing and lying to a federal agent after she
tried to enter Mar-a-Lago with various cover stories.
According to authorities, she was carrying a trove of electronics,
including a thumb drive authorities claimed was infested with
malware. Recent secret filings in the Zhang case suggest federal
authorities have information about Zhang that could endanger national
security, should anyone but the judge view it.
Zhang had initially bought a ticket to an event at Mar-a-Lago that
was being promoted by South Florida massage parlor entrepreneur, Li
"Cindy" Yang. The event was canceled after the Herald revealed Yang
was selling access to the president and his family through Mar-a-Lago
events that she promoted on Chinese social media.
Zhang was aware of the cancellation before arriving in Florida. Now,
both Zhang and Yang are at the center of the broader federal
counter-intelligence effort in South Florida. Yang is also the focus
of a separate campaign finance investigation by the Department of
Justice.
It is unclear whether Guo is in any way involved in the
counterintelligence investigation.
Top Senate Democrats are renewing calls for federal authorities to
assess potential security risks posed by Mar-a-Lago's status as a
club where 200,000 dollars buys a membership with nearly unlimited
access to the president's South Florida home.
"I do not know the guy at all," longtime Mar-a-Lago member George
Lombardi told the Miami Herald. "But I can say that the events that
took place in Mar-a-Lago months ago reflect the fact that there are a
few individuals that may live in the USA but they have pledged their
alliance to other countries." Still, Lombardi said he was not worried
by the news.
The Trump Organization, which runs Mar-a-Lago, did not immediately
respond to a request for comment.
Guo was photographed at Mar-a-Lago in December 2018, walking his
beloved tiny white dog around the grounds. At the time, the
president's wife, Melania, and other members of the family were
popping in and out of the club to attend various holiday events.
President Trump was in Washington at the time due to the government
shutdown.
The picture of Guo, his dog, and an unidentified female companion was
snapped by Claude Taylor, an anti-Trump activist, who was driving a
boat up the Intracoastal Waterway. On board Taylor's boat was a large
inflatable rat, with hair and suit that made it look like Donald
Trump.
"We were just having fun, creating mischief," Taylor told the Herald.
As he blasted a classic rock song - "I Fought the Law" by the Clash -
Taylor saw Guo and the female companion walking the dog near the
club's seawall. While Taylor snapped photos of Guo, the billionaire
started taking pictures of the boat. Taylor logged onto Mar-a-Lago's
unsecured guest Wi-Fi, and a while later received a contact from
inside the club. The contact included one photo of Guo inside
Mar-a-Lago reading a newspaper, and another with Taylor's rat boat
behind him, which Taylor assumed was taken by Guo's female companion.
"He wants as many people as possible to know he is a member in good
standing," Taylor remembers thinking at the time. "He's a fugitive
from justice who has asylum claims and he's using as leverage his
association with Mar-a-Lago to bolster his asylum claim."
"Mr. Guo is the most wanted dissident worldwide by the Chinese
Communist Party and has been their most outspoken and vitriolic
critic since his arrival in the United States," according to
Podhaskie, Guo's attorney.
The Chinese government has apparently gone to considerable lengths to
try to bring Guo back to mainland China.
On May 24, 2017, several Chinese officials went to Guo's home - a
67-million-dollar Manhattan penthouse - in an effort to persuade him
to drop his activism and return to China, according to an audio
recording of the meeting reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The officials were traveling in the United States on visas that did
not permit official business, prompting a behind-the-scenes skirmish
between the FBI and State Department on whether to arrest them as
they left the country, according to the Journal. In the end, the
State Department's fears of sparking an international incident won
out, and the Chinese officials left the country without incident.
Around the same time, Republican National Committee Finance Chairman
Steve Wynn, a casino magnate and longtime associate of Trump's with
business interests in Macau, a special administrative region of
China, reportedly hand-delivered a letter to the president on behalf
of the Chinese government. It requested that the United States deport
Guo back to China. (Wynn denied the story through his lawyer, when
asked for comment by the Journal). Trump appeared ready to grant
China's request until his aides dissuaded him by telling him that Guo
was a member of Mar-a-Lago, according to the Journal.
Guo is known to be one of China's most eccentric billionaires and has
spent his life mired in controversy. Guo's official Facebook page is
filled with videos of himself demonstrating his various workout
routines and anti-Chinese Communist Party content - like one recent
video in which he interviews former senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon
on U.S.-Chinese relations over dinner.
The unlikely duo met while Bannon worked in the White House as
Trump's chief strategist, according to Bannon, who spoke at a news
conference last year where he announced he was joining Guo's effort
to expose Chinese corruption around the globe.
During the news conference, Guo and Bannon alleged that the Chinese
government was involved in the death of another Chinese billionaire,
Wang Jian, former chairman of the HNA Group, who fell to his death on
July 4, 2018, while vacationing in the south of France. French
officials ruled the death an accident and claimed there was no
evidence pointing to suicide.
However, Guo said at the news conference that he had commissioned a
private investigation into Wang's fall that turned up several
anomalies, including how his bodyguards reacted by giving the dying
man facial acupuncture.
Together, Guo and Bannon launched the Rule of Law Foundation, which
they said would collect evidence in cases of deaths like Wang's,
according to the South China Morning Post.
"Mr. Guo has consistently emphasized his one goal: to take down the
CCP (Chinese Communist Party). As such, he has put all of his
available resources to that end - to take down this murderous
dictatorship and free his fellow countrymen in China," Guo's lawyer
told the Herald.