‘REMOTE’ CONTROL
Mogul-fire probers mull if set from afar
Authorities are investigating whether a mysterious blaze inside the palatial Manhattan apartment of Chinese billionaire and accused fraudster Guo Wengui was sparked remotely, sources told The Post Thursday.
As the FBI and FDNY try to figure out the truth behind the strange fire — which happened as officials busted Guo Wednesday — it also emerged that he had the 18-floor home wired to record his visitors, a source said.
“It was absolutely wired,” a source said of Guo’s luxury apartment at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue near Central Park.
“Everything that happened in there, especially in the solarium, was recorded. Every word.
“The fire was probably not started by a person in the space. It was started somehow remotely, and the whole apartment was wired.”
The fire broke out Wednesday as FBI agents were still searching it, after charging Guo — whose real name is Ho Wan Kwok — with running a billion-dollar fraud scheme and feeding his lavish lifestyle with the proceeds.
The sources said the flames destroyed “the beautiful wood-paneled library — there was a bar in there.”
It was not clear what method may have been used to start the blaze remotely, but the FBI and FDNY are leading the probe.
Guo, a Chinese exile and pal of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, is charged with running a lucrative fraud scheme and using the ill-gotten gains to buy a $26.5 million New Jersey mansion, a $37 million yacht and splurging on $36,000 mattresses and a $140,000 piano, according to federal prosecutors.
The controversial billionaire amassed a huge online following after launching two nonprofits in 2018 critical of the Chinese Communist Party, the feds said.
Guo and his alleged co-conspirator, Kin Ming, then set up several businesses, including a loan company, a media group and a members-only club, then siphoned off more than $1 billion from followers, prosecutors said.
He allegedly hosted the likes of Tony Blair inside the spacious apartment, sources said.
It was Blair who wrote a letter of introduction that got Guo into a more elite social circle.
“No one knew him, and he definitely would not have gotten in without that letter,” the source said. “It gave him a lot of standing he might not have had.”
Guo was hit with 12 counts in the alleged fraud scheme in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday.