How exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui manipulated an anti-graft official to secure huge gains

A disgraced disciplinary official of the Communist Party helped exiled billionaire Guo Wengui secure huge business gains by interfering in a number of cases in exchange for bribes, according to a court verdict on his corruption case released last week.

Meng Huiqing, formerly with the party’s top graft agency and now serving a 12-year jail term for taking 6.5 million yuan (US$956,000) in bribes, is the latest political patron of Guo to be put in the spotlight by Beijing, after former spymaster Ma Jian appeared in a video confession in April about how he and Guo looked after each other’s interests.

Guo, who is now living in New York but is subject to an Interpol red notice, has drawn global attention in recent months by unleashing a whirlwind of corruption allegations against senior party leaders in live-streamed interviews with overseas media as well as on Twitter, but has so far provided little hard evidence for his claims.

Beijing responded by launching an all-out publicity war on Guo in Chinese media and cyberspace to discredit him with its own allegations of fraud and links with corrupt officials.

The verdict on Meng was released last Saturday on the website of the Beijing courts. But it went unreported by mainland media until financial news outlet Caixin published a lengthy story on Friday morning.