Chapter 1821 - Laundering Money in the Entertainment City Project?
Chapter 1821: Laundering Money in the Entertainment City Project?
After Wen Corporation’s new clothing line was released, they were unstoppable and rapidly took over the entire clothing market. They took back twenty-five percent of the market share from the Li Corporation and were on par with them now.
According to the reports from the markets, sales volumes were still continuously rising and showed no signs of slowing. If this carried on, Wen Corporation would not only be able to take back the market share that belonged to them in less than a month, but they would also take over some of the Li Corporation’s original market share.
The sales of their jewelry and skincare products were also spurred by the clothing market, and sales volumes were rising as well.
Wen Corporation had managed to tide over the crisis and stabilize the situation.
Right now, the spy investigation was slowly starting in the Wen Corporation and was considered to be highly classified. Other than Old Mr. Wen, Wen Xinya, Mr. Cao, and a few others who were in the investigation, nobody else knew about it.
Those in charge of the investigation were recommended by Wen Xinya and were people she trusted.
Grandpa was already old and felt more sentimental about the people around him and the old workers in the Wen Corporation. Ties were stronger than logic, it was not a good thing.
No one could blame her for being suspicious, as, after Gu Yihan’s incident, she did not trust people easily anymore. She would not take the chance to test people’s personalities, or this would be too cruel for grandpa.
Therefore, she led this investigation.
Wen Xinya hurried into Grandpa’s office. “Grandpa, what’s the matter? Why did you call me so hurriedly?”
Over this period of time, although she had been busy with the Wen Corporation, she had also been looking after Lanxin.
After Lanxin underwent restructuring, after half a year of operations, the departments had already adjusted to the competition of international business and were on track.
They entered the American market and were a huge success, acquiring forty percent of the market.
In the European market, they made some progress as well and were doing quite well in Southern and Eastern Europe.
When she received Grandpa’s call, she had been organizing the advertising for Western Europe.
Old Mr. Wen looked at her with a solemn expression and pushed a document towards her. “There’s a problem with the Entertainment City Project. This is the financial report, take a look!”
The Entertainment City Project had always been Wen Corporation’s greatest worry.
After Ning Shuqian’s death and Wen Haowen’s expulsion from the Wen Corporation, he had taken over control of the project. He then naturally called for a stop to everything related to it and carried out a thorough investigation of its operations.
However, problems arose anyway.
What made things worse was that the problem was more severe than previously thought.
As Wen Xinya flipped the documents, her heart momentarily palpitated and she sucked in a deep breath. “When Wen Corporation and Zhang Corporation agreed to cooperate on the Entertainment City Project, the agreement was for Zhang Corporation to invest three billion yuan into this project. However, on our records, Zhang Corporation has invested over twenty billion yuan, and this was all received by Wen Haowen.”
Wen Xinya had an ominous feeling.
Ever since she interfered in the project, she had been closely monitoring it, but she never realized that there was such a huge sum of money that was not accounted for.
Old Mr. Wen nodded solemnly. “After Wen Haowen was removed from his post, I took over the Entertainment City Project and did a thorough investigation on it, including its finances, and found that there were problems with the investment sums.
“I sent people to investigate and found out that about two billion yuan were problematic, but it was all recorded with not many issues and no other suspicious activities. Hence, I did not doubt it. But I never thought that Zhang Corporation would use this to launder money through us, a legitimate business.”
The two billion yuan were invested into the project over six separate occasions.
Just nice, there were a few times where he had worked with the shareholders to suppress the investment amount into the project to delay its progress. However, Wen Haowen was persuaded by Ning Shuqian to press on with the project, and in order to proceed with it, he began to borrow money from Zhang Corporation.
There were also a few times where there were problems with the project, and there were insufficient funds. The shareholders were unhappy with Wen Haowen and were unwilling to fork out any money to solve the problem. All Wen Haowen could do was to borrow money from Zhang Corporation through Ning Shuqian.
Because both of them benefited from it, Zhang Corporation continued to fully support the project and continued to lend them money.
Afterward, Wen Corporation’s funding came back bit by bit, and the money that they borrowed from Zhang Corporation was returned. There’s a saying that goes, “It won’t be hard to borrow again if you returned what was borrowed.” So, Wen Haowen could continuously borrow money from Zhang Corporation, which no one doubted.
No one knew that there was still an entire sum of money that was unaccounted for.
Wen Xinya’s expression darkened, and her fingers turned cold. “Looks like Zhang Corporation manipulated Wen Haowen to launder money through the Entertainment City Project.”
Zhang Corporation was a company under the control of the Korean-Chinese Alliance, and its motive for working with the Wen Corporation on the Entertainment City Project was to make use of the Wen Corporation as a shield to undertake illegal trade and deals.
She had always guarded against such doings.
She never knew that Wen Corporation had been pulled down long ago.
Old Mr. Wen had a solemn expression on his face as he stared at the materials in front of him. “Twenty billion yuan is not a small sum, the Wen Corporation will not be able to remove ourselves from such a situation. This will ruin the reputation of our many years of operations.”
Old Mr. Wen’s heart was filled with hatred the moment he thought of Wen Haowen.
This brainless idiot had still caused so much trouble to the Wen Corporation despite having left for so long.
Till today, he still felt like killing him.
Wen Xinya’s throat dried up, and she had nothing to say at the moment. The solemn atmosphere in the office was unnerving, and it stressed people out till they could not even breathe properly.
After a while, Wen Xinya broke the silence, saying, “Grandpa, what do you plan to do?”
Laundering money was illegal, and the sum was really huge at twenty billion yuan. This was undiscovered during Grandpa’s previous investigation, and yet it was exposed at this critical juncture.
If one were to say this was not due to the Korean-Chinese Alliance and Xia Ruya, she would not believe it at all.
This matter could no longer be contained.
Xia Ruya wanted to make use of this to bring the Wen Corporation down.
Old Mr. Wen said, “While this incident is still not exposed, I plan to deal with it by informing the police. It would be hard for me to separate myself from this incident since I am the chairman of Wen Corporation and may have to stay in the police station for quite some time. Thus, Wen Corporation can only be supported by you.”
Other than calling the police, Wen Corporation had no other options.
Although calling the police might not be able to remove all suspicions from the corporation, it would still show that they were willing to undertake the responsibility. They were implicated for no reason, and after the police investigation, Wen Corporation’s sentence could be lightened. This might salvage their reputation.