Steve Bannon’s financier has been ordered by a New York judge to pay $134 million in contempt of court fines for intentionally moving his Yacht out of US waters to avoid debt collection, after Bannon was arrested on the same boat on fraud charges in 2020.
According to the ruling issued in New York Supreme Court Wednesday, Chinese billionaire and Bannon colleague Guo Wengui, currently a fugitive from the federal government with a reported net worth of $1.5 billion, hid billions in assets on the $28million superboat and purposely piloted the craft outside US jurisdiction to avoid making payments on a filched loan.
By moving the boat, named The Lady May, Guo violated a previous order that he return the craft to a US port, said Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager -a violation that warranted a daily fine of $500,000.
Multiple restraining orders had barred Guo, 51, from relocating or selling the boat or any of his other assets, a stipulation he ignored by hiding it in the Bahamas, the court said.
Steve Bannon financier Guo Wengui was ordered Wednesday to pay contempt of court fines for moving his yacht out of US waters to avoid paying a debt from more than two decades ago
‘Those proceedings established, among other things, that [Guo] exercised dominion and control over a yacht called the Lady May and resulted in a series of orders restraining [Guo] and/or the registered owners of the yacht called Lady May from removing the Lady May from the Court’s jurisdiction,’ Ostrager said.
However, ‘[Guo] and his cohorts made arrangement for the Lady May to sail to Florida in early October 2020 and, thereafter, to the Bahamas,’ the court filing continues, adding that a subsequent judgement ordered Guo to return the yacht to US waters or face a fine of $500,000 a day.
The dispute stems from a $30 million loan Guo received from a private equity firmin 2008 and never repaid, that has since ballooned to more than $116 million in interest over the past 24 years.
According to the ruling, Chinese billionaire and Bannon colleague Guo Wengui (left), a fugitive from the federal government, hid billions in assets on the $28million superboat and purposely piloted the craft outside US jurisdiction to avoid making payments on a filched loan
Guo’s lavish yacht, The Lady May, has since emerged as a key asset in the five-year-old case
In 2017, an affiliate of the Hong Kong-based firm, the Pacific Alliance Group, filed suit against Guo, alleging his companies failed to repay the loans or deliver on promised property transactions. Guo’s lavish yacht has since emerged as a key asset in the nearly five-year-old case.
The lawsuit is unrelated to Bannon’s August 2020 arrest by federal agents, after allegedly defrauding and stealing from a nonprofit, a charge for which he was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, in one of the head of state’s last moves before leaving office.
Guo is required to pay the sum within five business days, or risk arrest, according to the court.
Bannon had been staying on the self-styled Chinese dissident’s $28 million vessel, Lady May, pictured, for weeks before his arrest in August 2020 for allegedly defrauding his Mexico border wall charity of $25 million. He was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump
‘The Court has the authority to hold [Guo] in civil contempt … and ‘to punish [him], by fine and imprisonment,’ the judge wrote in the ruling.
In court documents, Guo has remained adamant that he doesn’t own the yacht.
Guo, a former member of China’s Communist Party, made headlines in June 2020 when he teamed up with Bannon to fly a fleet of propeller planes carrying banners congratulating the ‘Federal State of New China’ over New York City.
A YouTube video posted in August of that year showed Bannon with a slight sunburn, popped collar, and cigar in hand, standing next to Guo in one of the yacht’s glitzy rooms, railing against the Chinese government.
Later that month Bannon was arrested aboard the boat on charges he pocketed donations to a crowd-funded US-Mexico border wall fundraiser; a scheme unrelated to his dealings with Guo.
At some point Guo had also joined Mar-a-Lago where he was photographed by DailyMail.com just after Christmas 2018.
He has divided opinions even among his fellow dissidents – some adoringly printing his slogans on t-shirts, and others claiming he is in fact a Chinese government spy.
Delaware-registered company Saraca Media Group Inc offers GNews and GTV apps in Apple’s App Store. It also owns Guo Media; that hired Bannon for ‘strategic consulting services’ related to his investigation into the Chinese Communist Party. Under that year-long contract, Bannon received $1million from an unidentified source, WSJ reported
The enigmatic businessman is believed to have made his fortune in real estate, and says he came from humble beginnings with vivid descriptions of foraging twigs for firewood in a rural Chinese province during the country’s brutal 1970s Cultural Revolution.
Guo, who now owns lavish apartments in major cities, says he made his first property deal age 25, and began building his real estate empire in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou where he constructed the city’s then-tallest building, the Yuda International Trade Center.
As well as his $28 million yacht, he acquired a 9,000-square-foot apartment overlooking Central Park on the 18th-floor of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on New York’s Fifth Avenue and similarly luxurious pads in London and Hong Kong.
