Paul Hastings’ Conflict of Interest With Miles Guo – Ping An

It is a basic principle of trust law that trustees may not put themselves into a position where their personal interests conflict with their duties as trustees.

On July 15th, 2022, the U.S. Trustee Office appointed Luc A. Despins as Miles Guo’s Chapter 11 trustee. Due to the fact that Luc A. Despins is a long-term partner of Paul Hastings LLP (“Paul Hastings”), one of the most successful foreign law firms in Communist China over almost the last two decades; Miles Guo believes that the appointment of Despins’ as the trustee presents a significant conflict of interest.

Among over a thousand of Paul Hastings’ successful representations of Chinese enterprises, Ping An is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s state-owned enterprises and has been disclosed by Miles Guo as part of the CCP’s unrestricted financial and economic warfare toward the West.

Paul Hastings, through its Shanghai and Hong Kong offices, has had many successful representations for the different subsidiary entities from Ping An Group since 2015, such as:

Oct 27, 2015, Paul Hastings’ Hong Kong and New York offices announced its representation of Ping An Insurance Company of China (“Ping An”) in its joint venture with Blumberg Investment Partners to invest in long-term, high-quality net lease assets across the United States…which identified in excess of US$400 million of strategically located build-to-suit properties for potential investment.

March 30, 2016, Paul Hastings’ Hong Kong office announced its representation of Ping An in raising a Chinese RMB fund and forming two joint ventures with Pacific Eagle Real Estate Fund, L.P. for the development of two U.S. residential real estate projects in San Francisco and Malibu, California.

June 27, 2016, Paul Hastings announced its representation of Ping An ZQ China Growth Opportunity Limited in a $210 million strategic investment in consumer beauty products company Nu Skin Enterprises.

June 28, 2016, Paul Hastings’ Shanghai office announced its representation of Ping An Fund in its acquisition of a 47.4% interest in New York Stock Exchange-listed AutoHome from Telstra for US$1.6 billion.

Since Sept 2021, Miles has revealed that Ping An, the second largest insurance company in Communist China, and one of its subsidiary entities Shanghai Lujiazui International Financial Asset Exchange Co., Ltd.,(LUFAX), one of the largest online investment and financing platforms in China, is in fact “the most high-end political game in the world, and Ping An is almost the only common platform for all the kleptocrats families of the CCP to profit.”; its earliest investments include the Bush family, The Carlyle Fund, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Bridgewater, European Pension Fund, American Pension Fund, Capital Group, and Ratan Group.

Miles said that LUFAX is one of the CCP’s biggest financial and economic time bombs set up in the west; LUFAX has been revealed to have spent 1.7 billion US dollars on lobbying in order not to be delisted in the U.S. stock market, which is the largest lobby spendings in history.