by Matthew Palumbo Can there be a crime with no victims? That’s what anyone who read the recent indictment of New Federal State of China f...
by Matthew Palumbo
Can there be a crime with no victims? That’s what anyone who read the recent indictment of New Federal State of China founder Miles Guo must be asking themselves.
In light of what New York Southern District Attorney Damian Williams describes as a $1 billion fraud perpetrator by Guo, one would think that it wouldn’t be hard to find countless victims of the supposed scheme. But for Williams, it was seemingly an impossible task!
Williams claimed that “between April 20, 2020 and June 2, 2020, Kwok [Guo] and his co-conspirators sold approximately $452 million worth of stock to over 5,500 investors” in his media company GTV. Yet, of these 5,500+ investors, Williams names zero of them specifically as victims, and provides no evidence they see themselves as such. Not a single supposed victim is quoted by Williams – because one doesn’t exist to quote.
In fact, at a rally to support freeing Guo on March 18th, GTV investors spoke out that they don’t consider themselves victims of Guo. “We are not victims of Miles Guo or GTV. We are the victims of the SEC, of the DOJ, of the federal government agency of the United States who are infiltrated by the CCP,” one investor told a crowd. Thus, Williams is in a position where he’s claiming people have been defrauded – and yet these same people see themselves as being victims of Williams himself.
Attorney Williams makes allegations that aren’t just false, but laughably false. Williams accuses Guo in that letter of knowingly falsely representing the value of his company GTV News as being worth $2 billion when he “knew the valuation was false.” But the “$2 billion” figure was no fiction, it was from a third-party valuation report from Alvarez & Marsal, a global
professional services firm that offers management consulting services, including private business valuation services. In fact, their report, which was reviewed by the author, put GTV’s valuation as high as $2.6 billion – 30% higher than Guo said. In their financial analysis, Alvarez & Marsal use projected growth rates that are, in my opinion, far lower than one would expect from a firm in GTV’s industry, again meaning that their estimates are likely underestimates of its true value.
Williams’ bias is most present in his request to have Guo denied bail. This same Williams announced the charges against disgraced FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was allowed to be bailed out with anonymous co-signers – so what’s different about Guo’s case? The size of the alleged fraud in Guo’s is a fraction of what Bankman-Fried is accused of. Furthermore, Williams argues that Guo poses a threat to these three so-called “victims,” which have been exposed as CCP operatives pushing CCP-originated misinformation.
It appears that Attorney Williams has a clear bias against Guo, as demonstrated by his tendency to play fast and loose with the facts and to treat Sam Bankman-Fried more favorably despite much worse, and much substantiated alleged crimes. Williams’ bias is likely to negatively impact the legal proceedings in his case. In fact, during Guo’s arraignment hearing, presiding Judge Katherine Parker, in a rarity, referenced the landmark case of Brady v. Maryland and ordered the prosecutors to disclose any and all exculpatory evidence relating to Guo. The DOJ denying this sort of evidence to various figures they’ve targeted, such as Michael Flynn and those involved in January 6th, has become well known and has damaged their credibility. To little surprise, in this case, the New York prosecutors had admitted they worked a lot with China.
And speaking of China, in a three-byline article about Guo’s arrest in the Wall Street Journal, the authors seemingly unintentionally make a damning admission, that “Mr. Guo’s prosecution, if successful, might ease an irritant in U.S.-China relations.” They might as well have just come right out and admitted that this is all politically motivated. How else could a single individual being arrested ease China-U.S. relations? And if those are the stakes, how can anyone not believe his arrest is politically motivated to satisfy this goal?
Given these concerns, it is essential that we call for Miles Guo to be freed on bail so that he can receive a fair and impartial trial. It is crucial that the legal system operates with integrity and impartiality, and we must take action to ensure that all defendants receive equal treatment under the law.
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