Selfie queen jailed for gambling den
AFTER more than a year in detention, deprived of posting a single selfie, China’s most infamous online celebrity swept back into the public eye yesterday, plainly dressed and bespectacled, at her own criminal trial in Beijing.
Despite the demure look, the state jailed Guo Meimei for five years on the charge of running a gambling den.
Her critics have long accused the 24-year-old of flaunting an extravagant lifestyle, funded by corruption and work as a high-class prostitute. Many Chinese suspect that Guo’s wealth is tied to the country’s systemic corruption among public officials.
Guo was convicted of running casino-like operations from her Beijing flat with bets on Texas hold’em poker games approaching £300,000 (NZ$375,000). Gambling is outlawed in China.
Guo’s ongoing notoriety rests on the suspicion that she benefited from public donations to the statebacked Red Cross Society of China. In 2011, she posted pictures of herself leaning on a white Maserati sports car and clutching luxury handbags while falsely claiming to being a Red Cross employee. She later apologised for the lie, which damaged the charity’s reputation and led to a fall in the amount of donations it received.
Undaunted, Guo turned the scandal into a controversial career. ‘‘Tonight go party, I’m a sexy girl. I sometimes good sometimes bad, this is me, you don’t like me you can get out!’’ she wrote in 2012 on China’s equivalent of Twitter, where she drew almost two million followers.
She gambled in Macau, where casinos are legal, had spats with other rich young Chinese and claimed she would star in her own biopic called The Amazing Guo Meimei.
The good times lasted until July last year, when she was detained by Beijing police on suspicion of gambling, then paraded on CCTV, the national broadcaster, to make a pre-trial confession. CCTV said that Guo had admitted to having sex with men for up to £30,000 a time. Yesterday, she argued that she was guilty of gambling, but not organising others to gamble, and said some of her confession was forced.
Although some called Guo a heroine for exposing the Chinese Red Cross, she got little sympathy online and near the courthouse.
‘‘If there’s no corrupt official behind her, how could she have so much money?’’ asked Jing Jiesheng, a Beijing pensioner who came to watch the media scrum.
‘‘Even if her money is totally clean, she should have done something for the country, like building an old people’s home, instead of showing off online.’’