UK Court Records and Dissolved Companies Trace the Path of a $100M WLFI Buyer

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• Guren “Bobby” Zhou, through a firm called Aqua 1, put $100 million into World Liberty Financial’s WLFI tokens; as much as $75 million of that reached a company controlled by President Trump and his three sons.
• A February 2024 Court of Appeal judgment shows Zhou was arrested in March 2021 on suspicion of money laundering and released under investigation; he has not been charged.
• UK Companies House records show a decade-long pattern of dissolved flooring companies tied to Zhou before his move into crypto.
• World Liberty’s revenue-sharing structure pays out at the moment of purchase, which may explain why no visible scrutiny of Zhou’s background stopped the deal.

A Luxury Suite, Two Years After a Flooring Business Collapsed

Two years after his hardwood-flooring business in Britain collapsed and investigators there opened a money-laundering probe into him, Guren “Bobby” Zhou is said to have watched last month’s World Cup soccer final from a luxury suite in New Jersey, seated beside Zach Witkoff, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency venture run by President Trump’s family. Zhou is the reason Witkoff and his fellow co-founders got richer: through a firm called Aqua 1, he put a total of $100 million into World Liberty’s tokens, and under the company’s revenue-sharing terms, as much as $75 million of that money reached a company controlled by the president and his three sons.

The closest Zhou came to a public accounting of the deal before this week was a brief, little-noticed appearance on an audio stream on X, where he identified himself only as “Mr. Bobby” from Aqua 1:

“We’re very proud to be a major player in the World Liberty, which is Trump’s family’s crypto venture.”

It was as much distance as he put between his own name and the transaction, even as it made him one of the largest publicly known buyers of World Liberty’s tokens.

Why a $100 Million Buyer’s Identity Matters

World Liberty Financial is widely described as the decentralized-finance platform Trump and his sons launched in 2024 with the Witkoff family; Steve Witkoff, Zach’s father, holds the post of the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East. WLFI, the platform’s governance token, is what Aqua 1 bought. Under World Liberty’s own revenue-sharing policy, the bulk of what buyers pay for those tokens, as much as 75%, flows to DT Marks DEFI LLC, an entity the president and his three sons control. That mechanism is why Zhou’s $100 million purchase put actual money in the Trump family’s pocket, not just a stake in a speculative token. World Liberty has already gone to court over disputes involving other high-profile token holders, including a defamation lawsuit against Justin Sun tied to WLFI.

The Corporate Paper Trail

Zhou’s history before Aqua 1 is documented in UK government filings, not just secondhand reporting. Records at Companies House, the UK’s official company register, show Zhou tied to at least two dissolved flooring companies:

Zhou is said to have served as a director of 13 UK flooring companies between 2008 and 2019, nearly all of them since dissolved. That flooring collapse coincided with the opening of a criminal investigation into Zhou himself.

What Zhou’s 2024 Court of Appeal Judgment Actually Says

The clearest public account of the investigation into Zhou comes not from a leak or an anonymous source but from a Court of Appeal judgment. In February 2024, the Court of Appeal for England and Wales, hearing an immigration case brought by Zhou, his wife and their daughter over the family’s overstayed visas, laid out the timeline directly: Zhou was arrested on 24 March 2021 on suspicion of money laundering “over an 18-month period” and released under investigation pending a charging decision from the Crown Prosecution Service.

The National Crime Agency told the court its case file had been submitted to a senior Crown prosecutor “regarding money laundering offences,” with “a provisional date of late August 2022… given for a decision.”

The Home Office cited the “outstanding criminal prosecution” as grounds to defer the family’s visa applications, a description the court later acknowledged was technically incorrect, since Zhou had been released under investigation, not charged. The Court of Appeal sided with the Home Office anyway, ruling the deferral lawful. Zhou has not been charged with any offense in the more than five years since his arrest. Aqua 1’s defense of him is addressed below.

That precision matters: the public court record, dated February 2024, means the fact of an active NCA investigation was a matter of record roughly 16 months before Aqua 1’s $100 million reached World Liberty in June 2025, not something World Liberty would have needed inside information to find.

According to the New York Times, a UK court filing from November 2025 accuses Zhou of taking part with five other people in a money-laundering operation dating back to 2019; two of his longtime employees were reportedly charged in September 2025; one is said to have pleaded guilty, with the other’s trial expected in 2028.

From a Failed Crypto Startup to Aqua 1

Zhou’s route into World Liberty ran through his own earlier crypto venture, not through Wall Street or venture capital. Caduceus, a metaverse and edge-rendering project he ran, raised $7.6 million; crypto.news described it as “effectively worthless by 2024.” His next vehicle was Web3Port, a crypto fund. Web3Port announced a $10 million World Liberty investment in January 2025. Separate reporting on the deal’s blockchain flows puts the actual January transfer at $20 million. Web3Port’s British Virgin Islands entity was renamed Aqua 1 GP Limited roughly two weeks before the $100 million purchase was announced in June 2025, corporate filings cited in coverage of the deal suggest. Why the rename happened when it did, whether routine restructuring or a deliberate step to distance the vehicle from Web3Port’s own track record, hasn’t been established either way. World Liberty’s own token supply has drawn separate scrutiny since Zhou’s purchase, after the platform proposed unlocking 62 billion WLFI tokens.

Why WLFI’s Revenue Split Meant Trump’s Cut Was Never at Risk

World Liberty’s own revenue mechanism explains why the deal mattered financially to Trump and the Witkoffs regardless of who Zhou turned out to be. Under the platform’s revenue-share policy, the same 75% split described above, proceeds from token sales are split at the point of purchase, meaning the Trump family’s money was allocated the moment Aqua 1’s wire landed, not contingent on any later finding about where the $100 million originated or who Zhou actually was.

That structure is the more plausible explanation for how a recently-renamed investment vehicle, controlled by a man whose money-laundering investigation had been sitting in a published Court of Appeal judgment for well over a year, became one of World Liberty’s largest known buyers with no visible outside scrutiny: the platform’s economics were never exposed to that question in the first place. If World Liberty can show it ran a documented review of Aqua 1 and Zhou’s background, including the 2024 judgment, before accepting the money, that would undercut this reading. So would evidence that its revenue agreement includes any clawback or escrow tied to a buyer’s legitimacy; none has been reported.

A Second Opaque Stake in the Same Platform

Zhou’s purchase is not the only large, opaque investment World Liberty has taken. An entity linked to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser, reportedly bought a 49% stake in World Liberty’s structure for roughly $500 million, first disclosed in early 2026. That disclosure prompted Senators Elizabeth Warren and Andy Kim to formally demand a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review. No comparable Senate request has surfaced yet over the Aqua 1 deal specifically.

Timeline

What Aqua 1 and Zhou Say

Aqua 1 disputes any suggestion of wrongdoing. Its stated position is that Zhou “has never been convicted of any financial crime in any jurisdiction,” which is true as far as it goes, since he has not been charged. The firm has also denied any operational connection to Web3Port beyond the corporate renaming. World Liberty Financial itself, as distinct from Aqua 1, has not been reported to have commented on accepting funds from a buyer under an active money-laundering investigation.