Aqua 1 beneficial owner, top WLFI investor, appears on China default list

The beneficial owner of Aqua 1 Foundation, a UAE investment firm that bought $100 million worth of governance tokens in Trump family crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLFI), has been identified as Zhou Guren, a China-born individual, Caixin reported. Aqua 1 became WLFI’s largest investor after surpassing Justin Sun, who invested $75 million. According to Caixin, Zhou, who is from Shanghai, is currently listed on a Chinese court’s public defaulter registry, with unpaid amounts across six related cases totaling tens of millions of yuan. A recently disclosed indictment from the UK Crown Prosecution Service showed Zhou was linked to a money laundering case in the UK. Separately, a Shanghai-based timber company for which Zhou had served as legal representative was previously involved in a smuggling case in China.