August 20, 2020

This Is the Very Expensive Yacht Steve Bannon Got Arrested On

It reportedly belongs to a Chinese fugitive.

Former Donald Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon in Paris, France, last year.Eliot Blondet/AP

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On Thursday morning, federal agents arrested Steve Bannon off the coast of Connecticut on a 150-foot yacht named “Lady May,” charging him with defrauding hundreds of thousands of people who donated more than $25 million to fund a private wall along the US-Mexico border. 

Lady May has been touted has one of the world’s most sophisticated superyachts and is currently on sale for $27.9 million. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that it belongs to Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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A listing from Moran Yacht & Ship calls Lady May “innovative in every sense of the word” and boasts that it won “a succession of Superyacht awards in 2015.” Boat International reported in 2015 that Neville Crichton, a businessman and yacht racer originally from New Zealand, conceived of Lady May as a slightly bigger version of another yacht named Como. But, Crichton said, “it was the height of the global financial crisis and even though Australia came through that pretty well, I just wasn’t excited.” A year later, Dubois Naval Architects came up with a new design that was more than just a stretched-out Como. That yacht, Lady May, now belongs to Guo.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Bannon has worked for Guo, who sometimes goes by the name Miles Kwok, since shortly after his ouster from the White House three years ago. Guo, a reported billionaire, is one of China’s most-wanted fugitives. Chinese authorities have charged him with bribery, fraud, and money laundering—similar to the fraud and money laundering charges Bannon now faces. He denies the allegations, saying they result from his criticism of the Chinese government.

Guo has helped bankrolled Bannon’s efforts to attack China and paid Bannon $1 million for work between 2018 and 2019, Axios reported last year. But those efforts are reportedly the subject of an investigation, separate from probe that resulted in Bannon’s indictment. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the New York state attorney general’s office are investigating whether a media company formed by Bannon and Guo, GTV Media, violated securities laws and bilked investors.

Here’s Lady May sailing down the Hudson River toward where Bannon is expected to be arraigned in a Manhattan federal courthouse on Thursday:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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