Steve Bannon’s Patron Claimed to Be a Billionaire. Now He Says He’s Broke.

Guo Wengui, who touted his luxurious lifestyle, filed for bankruptcy.

Don Emmert AFP via Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Gou Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman and patron of Steve Bannon, who has described himself as a billionaire and touted his luxurious residences and a $28 million yacht, filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, claiming he has assets worth just $50,000 to $100,000.

Guo, who is an investor in Gettr, the conservative social media app, filed for Chapter 11 protection in federal court in Connecticut, where sources said he owns property. Guo listed liabilities of $100 million to $500 million. His biggest is $254 million that New York Justice Barry Ostrager has ordered Guo to pay a Cayman Islands-based hedge fund, the Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund, which sued Guo in 2017 to try to recover a debt dating to 2008, when Guo was involved in real estate in China. The bankruptcy filing came on the day the judge had set as a deadline for Guo to pay $134 million for violating a court order to keep his yacht within the court’s jurisdiction. 

Gou fled China in late 2014, ahead of fraud charges, and settled in New York, quickly buying a $68 million Central Park West apartment and joining Mar-a-Lago. In 2017, he began publicly accusing Chinese Communist Party elites of corruption and sexual hijinks. Few if any of his allegations were substantiated, but his efforts helped him win fans among critics of China, including on the US right. After Bannon’s ouster from the White House, he joined forces with Guo, receiving consulting fees and other perks to help Guo launch anti-CCP nonprofits, media companies, and a host of other ventures, many that use the letter “G,” for Guo, and heavily promote his assertions and ventures. These outfits have pushed out false conspiracy theories about Covid, the 2020 election, and other topics.

The bankruptcy filing is an apparent effort to avoid paying Pacific Alliance and other potential civil penalties. Guo’s filing listed creditors that include a number of people who are suing him in cases that remain active.

Guo had already set up complex corporate arrangements that appear aimed at allowing him to try to avoid creditors by denying ownership of assets courts have repeatedly ruled he controls. Gou has “secreted his assets in a maze of corporate entities and with family members,” Ostrager said in his ruling last week. “This scheme has enabled [Guo] to assert that he has no assets despite his lavish lifestyle, which plaintiff has catalogued with material from social media clippings, photographs and videotapes showing [Guo] living large and boasting of his wealth, expensive homes, private plane, and yacht.” Guo used his yacht and other flashy possessions to help market a crypto currency offering, a lifestyle company, and other products to fans. Bannon was living on Guo’s yacht in 2020 when he was arrested and charged with defrauding a charity that raised private funds that were supposed to help build a border wall. Trump, in one of his last acts as president, pardoned Bannon.

Guo’s bankruptcy filing, which does not appear to list as assets his stake in companies that bear his name and homes he has bragged about owning, seems to be his latest effort to avoid paying creditors. “He’s trying to use the Chapter 11 process to avoid lots of debts,” said Sasha Gong, an academic and journalist who was friendly with Guo before falling out with him in 2019. Gong noted that Guo’s list of creditors includes his own family company, Golden Spring New York, through which Guo has made various investments. Guo says that he owes the company about $21 million dollars. This appears to be an effort to shield assets controlled by Golden Spring from creditors, Gong argued.

Read Guo’s bankruptcy petition:

 

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate