Guo Wengui, the eccentric billionaire backer of Steve Bannon and social media web-site Gettr, has submitted for individual bankruptcy just days just after he was strike with a sizable wonderful for unpaid debts.
A court in New York gave Guo—a fugitive of the Chinese governing administration and vocal critic of its ruling party—five times to pay out a $134 million good, right after being uncovered in contempt of courtroom on February 10.
In a Gettr post on Tuesday, he introduced his personalized personal bankruptcy and signed the documents on camera.
The self-styled Chinese dissident, also recognized as Miles Kwok or Kwok Ho Wan, reported he “signed the particular bankruptcy software form for the to start with time in my everyday living.”
“From this instant on, I’m individually bankrupt because of to the persecution of the Chinese Communist Celebration,” he reported, with out elaborating.
His troubles stem from $30 million he borrowed from Hong Kong-dependent Pacific Alliance Asia Prospect Fund in 2008. Acquiring applied to loan to finance 1 of his organizations, the income was never repaid, the hedge fund reported, ensuing in a 2017 lawsuit to reclaim the sum, which had developed with fascination to far more than $100 million.
Guo’s collectors eyed his $28 million superyacht, the Girl May, which a court docket ordered to remain in the U.S., but he moved the boat outdoors of American jurisdiction in October 2020 in buy to shield it from financial debt collection, according to New York condition court docket Justice Barry Ostrager, who observed Guo to be in contempt of court.
The Chinese exile was fined $500,000 for every single working day the yacht remained outside the house of U.S. waters.
Guo, in the meantime, advised the court docket he does not possess the Lady Could, on which former White Home adviser Bannon was arrested for unrelated fraud costs in 2020.
The two adult men have had a professional relationship due to the fact Bannon stopped operating for former President Donald Trump in 2017, with Guo financing media jobs and hiring the China critic as a guide.
A basis owned by Guo is also powering the functions of Gettr.
DON EMMERT/AFP by means of Getty Illustrations or photos
In Guo’s bankruptcy filing, which he also shared on the web, he claimed he owed money to among 50 and 99 men and women. He positioned his personalized really worth between $50,000 and $100,000—a claim positive to challenged by his quite a few creditors.
Guo owns a multimillion dollar penthouse in New York’s Upper East Aspect, but, like his superyacht, he’s explained to the courtroom it isn’t really actually his.
Guo fled Beijing in 2014 just after Chinese authorities accused him of fraud. Living in The usa, he soon turned a challenging-line CCP critic and an influential political commentator among the particular conservative Chinese-American circles.
Having said that, human legal rights activists and other individuals persecuted by the Chinese governing administration have accused him of hijacking their cause.
In a dwell stream on his Gettr account on Sunday, Guo said he experienced “no fascination in political whatsoever [and] I want absolutely nothing but to take down the CCP.”