China rejects alleged cyberattacks targeting fugitive tycoon Guo Wengui

This August 30, 2017, AP file photo, shows a Twitter page of fugitive Chinese businessman Guo Wengui.

Beijing has dismissed allegations of cyberattacks targeting Guo Wengui, a New York-based critic of China’s ruling party, saying the billionaire-turned-activist has fabricated the claims amid his ongoing political asylum bid in the US.

Guo, 50, has leveled corruption allegations against senior Chinese Communist Party officials. He is under investigation by judicial officials at home for at least 19 major criminal cases, including kidnapping, fraud, money laundering, bribing a top Chinese intelligence officer and rape.

At Beijing’s request, Interpol has issued a red notice for his arrest.

The business tycoon left China in 2014 and applied for political asylum in the United States in September. He claimed recently that the law firm representing him, Clark Hill PLC, has backed out of defending him after it came under attack by Chinese hackers.

The Hudson Institute, a US-based think tank, also annulled an event that planned to host Guo last week, claiming it had detected an attack from Shanghai aimed at its website.

The suspected attack prompted a complaint from US Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a meeting with China’s Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun last week.

However, in a statement provided to Reuters on Sunday, the Ministry of Public Security said an investigation had found “no evidence” of Chinese government involvement in the alleged cyberattacks against Guo.

The law enforcement ministry added in its statement that US officials had been provided with evidence that Guo had forged what he claimed to be “top-secret” documents.

“The falsified official documents and the false information he fabricated are sensational and outrageous,” the ministry said, adding that the documents, which claim Beijing has dispatched secret agents to the US, were “clumsily forged” and “full of obvious mistakes.”

Guo has rejected the Chinese ministry’s statement.