A self-exiled billionaire Chinese business tycoon once believed to be among China’s wealthiest men was sentenced on Monday (Jun 29) to 30 years in a US prison for a massive financial fraud that a federal judge said cost over 1,000 people worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars.

Guo Wengui, who fled China a decade ago and reinvented himself as a US-based Communist Party critic, was sentenced in a Manhattan courtroom packed with his supporters by Judge Analisa Torres. She said he “preyed on those seeking to bring democracy to China”, taking their money so he could live lavishly.

Before he was sentenced, Guo protested his treatment in jail, saying he was taken to the hospital early Monday. He disputed a prosecutor’s portrayal of him as a malingerer faking illness, saying he repeatedly vomited as he was returned to jail before being brought to court.

“When I came here, I said: ‘I have a tummy ache, I need to go to the bathroom, I don’t feel well,’” Guo said through an interpreter of his courthouse arrival. Later, Guo wiped his mouth repeatedly with a tissue.

He only briefly addressed the criminal case, defending his intentions by saying in reference to the Chinese Communist Party: “The reason I came to the US was to destroy the CCP.”

The judge, in sentencing him, read snippets of letters she received from victims who described losing their life savings and feeling severely anxious and shamed and having family members turn on them for their poor investment choice.

Torres said Guo “takes no responsibility for his actions and instead insists incredibly his conduct caused no loss and harmed no one”. She said he “has called upon supporters to harass and intimidate those who dare to speak out against him”.

The judge ordered Guo to forfeit US$889 million in restitution.

Wei Chen, a victim who testified at trial, told Torres that Guo’s fraud “destroyed my life” and that of her family.

As Guo left the courtroom after the sentencing, supporters applauded and shouted toward him.

Before his arrest and detention without bail three years ago, Guo grew so close to conservative political strategist Steve Bannon that they announced a joint initiative to overthrow the Chinese government in 2020. He lived in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park and had joined President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida golf club. 

Prosecutors had requested he serve at least 30 years in prison, saying his “astonishing” fraud from 2018 to 2023 “destroyed hundreds of lives” and left “a wreckage of victims and families who have been devastated financially, emotionally, and psychologically”.

Prosecutors said in court papers that his ill-gotten riches fueled “a lifestyle of extraordinary excess and indulgence, a gilded life of mansions, yachts, race cars, designer clothes and luxury furnishings”.

Guo was convicted of nine of 12 criminal charges during a seven-week trial that prosecutors said showcased his deception of thousands of investors in bogus deals that enabled Guo’s lavish lifestyle.

In a court filing, Guo’s lawyers wrote that he was the victim of the Chinese Communist Party’s “grand, pervasive, and life-threatening” pursuit of him. They alleged that the party recruited elites in US business, entertainment and politics to conspire against him.

They said in presentence court papers that a lengthy prison term would only validate China’s smear campaign and “embolden further efforts to eliminate Chinese dissidents from public life” while defendants in similar cases received prison terms of two to four years.

The lawyers noted that a court probation officer wrote to the sentencing judge that Guo, also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, had scars and disfigurements from physical torture he endured in China and subsequent surgeries he underwent from 1993 to 2022 to repair the injuries.

Defence lawyers said Guo’s wealth grew as his family became the largest shareholder of China’s largest publicly traded securities company, but he became a target of Chinese government officials as he exposed them as corrupt. Eventually, the lawyers wrote, Guo moved to Hong Kong, London and then New York in 2017.

Chinese authorities accused him of rape, kidnapping, bribery and other crimes, but Guo said those allegations were false.

Prosecutors say Guo convinced hundreds of thousands of people to invest more than US$1 billion, total, in entities he controlled, including his media company, GTV Media Group Inc., and his so-called Himalaya Farm Alliance and the Himalaya Exchange.

Guo, the government alleged in presentence court papers, was “entirely unrepentant” for his crimes after he took advantage of lax US asylum laws to flourish in America. (CNA, AP)

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Chairman of CG Corp Global and Nepal’s only Forbes-listed billionaire, Dr. Binod Chaudhary, recently joined the Sri Lanka Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation for a candid conversation on building businesses across some of the world’s most demanding markets. 

Moderated by Haresh de Soysa, Director at Trade Promoters Limited and former President of EO Sri Lanka, the conversation ranged from the discipline of Japanese business culture to the mechanics of family succession, drawing on Dr. Chaudhary’s five decades of building a multi-billion dollar empire across 32 countries, starting from a landlocked nation of 30 million people.

His connection with Sri Lanka goes back nearly 25 years. He entered in 2001 during the civil war and has remained through every crisis the country has faced since, at one point announcing an additional USD 50 million investment when others were pulling back. 

His group’s presence here today spans banking through a majority stake in Union Bank, hospitality through multiple properties including the Taj Samudra, a partnership with John Keells on the BYD agency, and a cement feasibility study currently underway – a footprint that reflects genuine long-term conviction in the country’s potential.

Following are five key insights from Nepal’s only Forbes-listed billionaire, Dr. Binod Chaudhary:

On operating in hard markets

The line that drew the most reaction from the room came when Dr. Chaudhary was asked about the advantage of building in difficult environments. “If you can figure out how to succeed in countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, it is like you know how to get on a badminton court and be ready for a cricket ball to come at you,” he said. 

His argument was straightforward: entrepreneurs who have survived currency crises, political instability, and regulatory uncertainty develop a shock-readiness that those who have only operated in stable markets simply do not carry. That reflex, he suggested, transfers well when you eventually move into easier terrain.

On Japan and the collective mindset

Dr. Chaudhary has long cited Japan as the education he never received in a classroom – a country whose business culture shaped his thinking during visits in the 1970s. He described three qualities he observed that have stayed with him: a deep organisational discipline, a resistance to individual grandstanding, and a willingness among those who lose an internal argument to give unconditional support to the outcome that was chosen.

The logic behind that last quality, he explained, is simple. “If we win, I win.” Individual and collective outcomes are treated as identical. His observation for the room was that this behaviour cannot be mandated – it can only follow from an environment where that belief is made economically real. Incentive structures, shared metrics, and genuine collective accountability must come first. The discipline follows naturally from there.

On partnerships

With partnerships spanning Marriott, Tata, and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance – among many others – Dr. Chaudhary has built more joint ventures than most entrepreneurs will encounter in a lifetime. His advice on what makes them last came down to a single distinction. “For both sides to win, each side must bring something valuable and value-adding,” he said.

The difference between the two matters enormously. Value that is handed over in a transaction – a contract, a licence, a market introduction – is a stock. Once transferred, it depreciates. Value that keeps regenerating – a capability, a distribution network, a relationship that deepens – is a flow. Partnerships, he argued, do not die from betrayal. They die when one party stops being a flow and becomes a stock. His counsel was to run that test honestly on every partnership you are in.

On succession and family business

As a third-generation builder – whose grandfather arrived in Nepal from Rajasthan, and whose father opened the country’s first department store – the question of succession carries particular weight for Dr. Chaudhary. He spoke to it with a candour that is rarely heard in public settings.

His central point was structural. The instinct to divide responsibility among family members along functional lines tends not to work, he said. Each generation needs room to own an outcome completely – not a role within someone else’s business. It is a lesson he has applied within his own family. His eldest son Nirvana Chaudhary serves as Managing Director of Chaudhary Group in Nepal and is also Chairman of Union Bank of Colombo. Rahul Chaudhary, as Managing Director and CEO of CG Hospitality, leads the group’s ambition to reach 500 hotels by 2030. Varun Chaudhary serves as Managing Director of CG Corp Global with oversight of the group’s broader global operations. Three sons, three distinct domains – each with room to build something of their own.

Beyond structure, he spoke of the importance of a strong family constitution: a framework for ownership and governance that gives the business continuity regardless of which individuals happen to be leading it at any point in time.

On talent and credentials

Dr. Chaudhary was pointed in his view on how entrepreneurs should think about hiring. “No business school has a monopoly on bringing out the best in people,” he said. “The most average of schools can produce some of the best.” The implication was that credentials signal starting conditions, not ceiling. Drive, track record under pressure, and the rate at which someone learns from constraint are better predictors of who will grow with a business than the name of the institution they attended. His suggestion was to identify at least one or two high-potential people without the obvious CV and back them with intention.

The session was organised by Umayanga Nanayakkara, Learning Chair of EO Sri Lanka and Director of Asset Engineering Pvt Ltd. 

EO Sri Lanka, currently chaired by Tarindra Kaluperuma, Executive Director of Stafford Motor Company (Pvt) Ltd, is part of a global network spanning 222 chapters and more than 19,000 entrepreneurs across 87 countries. 

The session with Dr. Chaudhary, who later this year will break ground on a USD 100 million Ritz-Carlton in Kathmandu, reflected the kind of access the organisation makes possible: candid, specific, and rooted in real experience. (Newswire)

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A Vietnamese tycoon has been sentenced to death by lethal injection over one of the greatest bank frauds the world has ever seen.

Billionaire Truong My Lan, 67, received her sentence on Thursday for looting one of Vietnam‘s top banks over the course of 11 years.

Prosecutors claimed she stashed cash from the bank in her basement for three years – an amount that would weigh up to an unbelievable two tonnes.

In a rare verdict, the property developer has now become one of the very few Vietnamese women to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.

The verdict reflects the astounding extent of the fraud as Truong My Lan was found guilty of taking out $44 billion (£35 billion) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank.

That is approximately 9.36% of Vietnam’s 2024 GDP.

Dressed down from her usual lavish gowns and looks, Truong My Lan denied the charges against her.

She will now have to refund $27 billion, as per the court verdict, which prosecutors say may never be recovered.

“The defendant’s actions… eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the (Communist) Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City.

Some think the death penalty is a way of encouraging the tycoon to return some of the missing billions.

In an oddly forthright manner, the usually secretive communist authorities went minute detail into Truong My Lan’s case.

In a “show trial” unlike any other in the communist era, officials revealed that 2,700 people were asked to testify, with 10 state prosecutors and some 200 attorneys participating.

The evidence was stored in 104 crates weighing a total of six tonnes, with 85 defendants tried alongside the billionaire.

Following a five-week trial in the economic capital of Ho Chi Minh City, 85 others await judgements and sentences on allegations ranging from bribery and abuse of authority to appropriation and violations of banking law.

Devil in disguise

Truong My Lan was raised in Ho Chi Minh City, then known as Saigon, by a Sino-Vietnamese family.

With a sizable ethnic Chinese population, it has long been the commercial backbone of the Vietnamese economy, going all the way back to when South Vietnam was still fighting communism and its capital.

She began her career selling cosmetics at market stalls alongside her mother, but once the Communist Party ushered in a phase of economic reform known as Doi Moi in 1986, she started investing in real estate.

She possessed a sizable portfolio of hotels and restaurants by the 1990s.

By 2011, as a well-known businesswoman in Ho Chi Minh City, Truong My Lan was able to coordinate the combination of three smaller, financially struggling banks to become Saigon Commercial Bank.

In Vietnam, it is illegal to own more than 5% of the shares in a bank.

However, the prosecution claims that Truong My Lan truly owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial through hundreds of shell corporations and proxies.

They said that she appointed her own employees as managers and then gave them orders to grant hundreds of loans to the network of sham firms she controlled, all while abusing her power.

The sums extracted are astounding as 93 per cent of the bank’s loans came from her.

Prosecutors claim that starting in February 2019, she gave her driver instructions to take out 108 trillion Vietnamese dong—more than $4 billion (£2.3 billion)—in cash from the bank and stash it in her basement over a three-year period.

Even with Vietnam’s highest denomination bills, so much cash would weigh two tonnes.

She was also charged with giving lavish bribes to make sure her loans were never investigated. One of the defendants in the trial was a former central bank chief inspector who was charged with taking a $5 million bribe.

Le Hong Hiep, from the Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told the BBC he was left completely “puzzled” by the scheme.

“Because it wasn’t a secret,” he said.

“It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations.

“It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice. SCB is not the only bank that is used like this. So perhaps the government lost sight because there are so many similar cases in the market.” (The Sun)

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