If convicted, Guo - who is also known as HO Wan Kwok, Miles GEO and Miles KWOK faces a long jail sentence or, possibly, the death sentence.

He is accused of large scale fraud as well as corruption and, most disturbingly, conspiring to undermine, potentially to over-throw, the government of China. He is also accused of bribery, kidnapping and rape. Guo's arrival in the USA in 2014 brought him into close association with Steve Bannon and former US President Trump.

Only the fraud and associated money laundering charges are the subject of the trial that started last week.

GUO has been in trouble in the USA: working with Gannon's G News and GTV media, in 2021 he reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to pay compensation and penalties amounting to USD539m as a result of illegally seeking investments in those companies.

Meanwhile in a Chinese Court, Goi's lawyers began their defence asking why he would steal USD1,000 million when he's already so rich.

In 2023 he was arrested by the US which alleged fraud.

Guo's story has a "WHAAAAAAT?" factor. He appears to have access to many hundreds of millions of dollars but his troubles have been long-standing. For example, in 2017, in Hong Kong, the assets of a company held in the name of Guo Mei, his daughter, were frozen. Rumour says that the accounts had a total of HKD1,560 million of which about half was money received from a soveriegn fund in Abu Dhabi.

It is not clear whether China has sought extradition but it's clear that, since Guo was denied bail in the US in 2023, any request would be met with an insistance that the US process completes first.

But perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the case is that, in 2022, Guo lost litigation brought by Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund from which Guo took a loan of USD30 million. A court ordered him to pay USD134 million, ostensibly for "attempting to avoid debt collection (media report). What he actually did, it was found, was arrange for a boat (the kind people call a "yacht" even though it's really just a motor boat) out of US waters to the Bahamas. Smacks of Jo. Low, a bit.

So, Guo, saying that he could not pay the fine in the five days he was given decided to enter Chapter 11 protection from creditors. According to media reports, he claimed his personal assets amount to between (yes, the zeros are correct) 50,000 and 100,000.