China turns to US courts in effort to silence exiled businessman

Guo Wengui’s accusations from abroad rattle Beijing political elite
By Emily Feng, Sherry Fei Ju and Lucy Hornby in Beijing

Guo Wengui: Beijing has entangled him in at least five lawsuits 
China has taken its fight against an exiled businessman who has stirred up a political hornets’ nest to the US courts, gambling on a legal drama to quell his damaging revelations.
Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, has levelled personal accusations against Wang Qishan, China’s powerful anti-corruption tsar, from his home in Manhattan. 

The gripping allegations have transfixed the Chinese public as elite factions jockey for influence in the ruling Communist party.
In response, Beijing has entangled Mr Guo in at least five lawsuits, marking an unprecedented engagement with the US judicial system. 

That could prove an expensive distraction for Mr Guo, who relies on Twitter and overseas Chinese media for free airtime.
“No one anticipated that lawsuits against Mr Kwok would come out in such scale,” said Tao Jingzhou, of Dechert, a law firm in Beijing. 

Chinese companies have been defendants in the US but rarely initiated a complaint in a US court, he said.
Many believe that Mr Guo is attempting to drive a wedge between Wang and Xi Jinping, China’s president. 

The party has countered by writing in Hong Kong media that Xi, Wang and Meng Jianzhu, the country’s security chief, are united against Mr Guo.
For the moment, attempts to silence him centre on New York courts. 

China has no extradition treaty with the US and Chinese agents desperate to repatriate him have not provided US law enforcement with sufficient evidence of any crimes committed, people with knowledge of the situation said.
HNA Group, the international conglomerate, announced late on Thursday that it had filed a defamation suit in a New York state court against Mr Guo, according to a court summons. 

The suit is in response to remarks Mr Guo made on his social media accounts.
Last week, journalists were offered unusual but limited access to a trial in China of Mr Guo’s former employees, as part of the effort to discredit him. 

They pleaded guilty to obtaining loans and foreign currency under false pretences.
On Friday morning, two employees were sentenced to two years in prison with three years of probation. 

A third employee was sentenced to two years and three months of imprisonment. 

Mr Guo's company, Pangu Investment Co, was fined Rmb245m ($36m).
China’s attempt to use its court system and jailhouse confessions to muzzle Mr Guo have been handicapped by a lack of credibility. 

During Xi’s tenure many Chinese lawyers who worked as independent defenders in civil rights cases have been jailed. 

The anti-corruption watchdog led by Wang functions without oversight, leading to complaints of false accusations, torture and even deaths in its custody.
Meanwhile, China’s supreme court president in January denounced “false western ideals like judicial independence”.
This week, nine Chinese companies filed a lawsuit in New York to recoup Rmb272m ($38.5m) in unpaid fees from the construction of Mr Guo’s Pangu Plaza near Beijing’s Olympic facilities nine years ago.
“We are only a small party in this lawsuit action, and we only went along like everybody else,” said one of the plaintiff companies. 

“We did not initiate the US court case nor did we play any active role in the process. We only provided the required documents to relevant parties.”
Their suit follows three others previously launched in New York: an $88m lawsuit from Hong Kong-based Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund over an unpaid loan and two defamation cases brought by Pan Shiyi, chairman of Beijing property developer Soho China, and Hu Shuli, chief editor of financial magazine Caixin.
Meanwhile, another woman named among Mr Guo’s stream of allegations has also threatened to sue.
"We have a total of Rmb28bn in debt disputes involving 145 companies. Why have only nine come forward? I like to fight in groups!” Mr Guo tweeted in response to the suits.
But he evaded representatives sent to his Manhattan apartment, said Kevin Tung, the nine plaintiffs’ New York-based lawyer. 

“I hope he settles,” he said. 

“But I don’t think this man has the personality to do a settlement.”