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Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui seeks asylum in US
5:51 CAT | 08 Sep 2017
Reuters (File photo) / Billionaire businessman Guo Wengui in New York.
An exiled Chinese businessman who has alleged corruption among China’s political and corporate elites is seeking asylum in the US as Beijing tries to discredit him and try him on criminal charges.
Guo Wengui, a property tycoon who has lived in the US since 2015, said on a live video broadcast yesterday that he had applied for political asylum to protect himself from what he called Chinese efforts to persecute and silence him.
“My home country wants to harm me by any means necessary,” Mr Guo said in the video, filmed in his New York residence.
A pending asylum application would allow him to remain in the US, potentially for years as the process unfolds. If approved, Chinese authorities “will not be able to take me back, no matter what method they use”, he said.
In recent months, Mr Guo has riveted many Chinese with salacious tales of allegedly corrupt ties between China’s business elite and senior Communist Party officials.
His disclosures, aired on social media and video interviews, have the potential to roil behind-the-scenes jostling among senior leaders seeking promotions at the party’s twice-a-decade leadership shuffle next month.
Though Mr Guo has provided scant evidence to substantiate his allegations, many Chinese are paying attention. Beijing has responded by declaring him a criminal suspect and requesting an Interpol arrest notice that was issued in April.
A decision to grant Mr Guo asylum could lead to diplomatic complications for the Trump administration, which is seeking China’s co-operation in pressuring North Korea as Pyongyang ramps up its testing of missiles and nuclear technology.
Beijing has indicated it wants Mr Guo returned to China as a wanted exile, and his pending request will likely be an additional irritant between Beijing and Washington.
The US and China don’t have an extradition agreement.
Mr Guo, who also uses the name Miles Kwok, filed his asylum application on Wednesday.
Mr Guo is living in the US on a tourist visa that expires within weeks, his lawyer Thomas Ragland said. “In addition to the asylum claim, we may apply to extend that visa or to change to a different visa status,” he said, adding that a visa would allow Mr Guo more freedom to work in US and travel abroad, compared with a basic entitlement to remain in the country granted by an asylum application.
Mr Guo has said he left China in late 2014 after receiving a tip about the imminent arrest of one of his “benefactors”, a then vice-minister of state security who was later detained for alleged corruption.
He then laid low before surfacing early this year with a series of video interviews and Twitter posts claiming he had detailed evidence of wrongdoing by senior party officials, their relatives and associates, and prominent Chinese businessmen.
Mr Guo’s disclosures have earned him a large following online, and a multi-pronged effort to discredit him.
China’s Foreign Ministry has dismissed Mr Guo’s allegations as lies. Chinese courts have jailed and fined a number of Mr Guo’s former associates and subordinates for crimes including fraud and embezzlement. Chinese media have published articles portraying him as unscrupulous. Several Chinese companies and individuals have sued Mr Guo for defamation in US courts.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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