The Embezzler's Shadow
After deciding to resolve the QS Express strike, I first reviewed the materials on the QS Express strike that had been submitted to Junggyeongbon. The strike itself was not the only problem. While Ho-gyun had been living as a wastrel and paying almost no attention, QS Express had become the stronghold of the national courier union. That was why Je-gyun had so confidently brought up the QS Express strike in front of Chairman Kwon Byung-do, and why everyone present had been shocked when I volunteered to handle it.
After examining the Junggyeongbon files along with news articles related to the QS Express strike, the immediate problems I needed to solve were roughly as follows.
QS Express charged higher delivery fees than other major courier companies, yet paid its delivery workers the lowest wages in the industry.
Additional compensation promised in the form of bonuses and the like had not been paid for several years.
Even from a management perspective as QS Express’s second-largest shareholder, this struck me as highly unusual. There were no reports indicating that QS Express’s service quality was markedly superior to its competitors, yet it charged more while paying its frontline workers less. That was difficult to understand.
Other issues included:
QS Express shifted 100% of liability for damaged goods during delivery onto the responsible driver.
Logistics center loading and unloading workers were not given proper rest periods.
The current strike by QS Express workers, sparked by these grievances, enjoyed considerable public support. The summary of the strike case that I read was echoed by the judgment document that appeared before my eyes.
[Order 1. The defendant shall pay the plaintiff 22,206,000 won per person.]
It was the judgment that would be handed down if QS Express delivery employees took their unpaid wages to court. Since the amount exceeded 22 million won per person, multiplying it by the number of claimants would cause the total to balloon hundreds of times over. It matched my memories from roughly five years before my regression.
QS Express would be crippled trying to raise the compensation money after unpaid wages were joined by lawsuits over various unfair practices. Endless additional suits over other irregularities would push the company to the brink of survival, until it was finally sold off at a bargain price. The problems at QS Express would then spread like wildfire through the entire QS Group, inflicting severe damage to its image.
I could not allow events to unfold exactly as they had before my regression. This was not merely a matter concerning the small company called QS Express; it was the crucial first step that would determine my position in the QS Group succession struggle.
Of course, the advantage of seeing the judgment in advance was not limited to simply predicting victory or defeat. When defeat was certain, as in this case, the matter should be settled through compromise before it reached court.
There was also something the materials at Junggyeongbon and the articles could not explain. If the company collected higher delivery fees from customers yet failed to pay its frontline delivery workers properly, that money should have remained inside the company. Alternatively, it should have been classified as profit and distributed as dividends to shareholders. Yet the accounting records QS Express had prepared for the past two years indicated neither had happened.
QS Express did not appear to have any particularly fatal structural flaw that would cause money to leak away compared with other transport companies, nor were its office staff salaries unusually high. Had such an obvious management problem existed, Junggyeongbon would have stepped in with restructuring long before the strike occurred.
That left only one remaining possibility.
Someone inside QS Express is siphoning off company funds.
Otherwise, this absurd imbalance between input and output could not be explained.
Now the problem was identifying who was embezzling and by what method, and that did not look easy. It was not as though I could march into QS Express right now and shout for the embezzler to step forward; the culprit was hardly going to appear before me of their own accord.
I tried to find answers in the judgment document that appeared before my eyes, but perhaps because I still knew too little about the case, most of it remained blurry and offered no clues that could identify the embezzler.
So the solution I came up with was to ask someone who had worked at QS Express and could also be considered one of my own people.
* * *
After the Law Firm Seungbaek’s closing time, I met my secretary Cha Ye-na, a former QS Express employee, at a family restaurant. When I told her I had been assigned the QS Express strike case, she stopped cutting her steak and asked in surprise,
“You agreed to handle that, sir? It won’t be easy.”
“It’s a company belonging to my family, and I’m the second-largest shareholder. I already felt uneasy about how poorly QS Express was being run, and the topic came up while I was eating with Father, so I decided to take it on.”
“I see.”
“If you know anything, tell me. I still can’t get a feel for where to start cutting.”
“Well, when I was at QS Express I was just an ordinary employee, so I didn’t hear much. But I did pick up that the company is split between the president’s faction and the director’s faction and they’re fighting viciously, and that the union chairman leading the strike is someone you simply can’t reason with.”
Hmm? That sounded like it might give me a lead. I already knew the union chairman was a difficult opponent capable of uniting the national courier union, but the conflict between the president’s line and the director’s line that came before it suddenly piqued my interest. It seemed related to the materials I had examined closely before meeting Cha Ye-na.
“Why are the president and the director fighting? Does it have anything to do with QS Express having a high proportion of B2B transactions?”
B2B (Business to Business) transactions referred to dealings between companies. The opposite was B2C (Business to Consumer) transactions, dealings between companies and individuals. In the courier industry, B2B transactions mostly involved transporting cargo entrusted by companies such as online shopping malls and collecting fees, while B2C transactions mainly involved cargo entrusted by individuals.
Oddly enough, QS Express handled far more volume from other companies than from individual customers. Hearing my question, Cha Ye-na tilted her head slightly.
“Now that you mention it, that does seem to be the case. Director Lee Jae-hyuk at QS Express is the one who secures contracts with other companies, so QS Express does live off B2B deals. That must be why the director’s voice carries so much weight.”
“What was the general opinion of that director inside the company?”
“Director Lee Jae-hyuk is the head of his own faction, so opinions among the employees were extremely divided. He spends money freely and pushes promotions hard for people on his side, but he’s incredibly stingy with everyone else.”
“He spends money freely?”
“Yes. He pays for company dinners out of his own pocket without hesitation, and when it comes to congratulatory or condolence money for his people’s family events, he reportedly adds an extra zero compared with everyone else. I never attended dinners or events from that faction, so I don’t know the details. But can a director’s salary really be that high?”
The outline was finally becoming clear. Just as Cha Ye-na had pointed out, a director’s salary at QS Express—not even QS Electronics—was nowhere near enough to cover the kind of spending required to manage an internal faction. It meant he had another source of income.
* * *
After finishing the meal with Cha Ye-na, I immediately contacted Junggyeongbon and obtained the corporate card usage records of QS Express executives. As I had expected, Director Lee Jae-hyuk’s corporate card expenditures were enormous. Amounts of 100 million won a month appeared without difficulty, and in heavy months the figures reached 200 or 300 million won. Most of the charges were at entertainment establishments whose detailed breakdowns were difficult to verify.
Until now these had apparently been processed as entertainment expenses for securing contracts, but given the circumstances, card kiting seemed likely. Card kiting involved paying a certain amount by card at an establishment and then receiving the remainder in cash after deducting a commission. The cash secured this way was probably Director Lee Jae-hyuk’s main source of income.
Well, even though QS Express charged high delivery fees, it was said to be good at winning contracts, so he had not kept everything for himself; some of it must have gone as bribes to the responsible parties at client companies.
This was not the 1980s. To inflate performance this way and then embezzle on top of it—he absolutely had to be taken down. I was also a shareholder of QS Express, so Director Lee Jae-hyuk had been damaging my company and pocketing money that should have come to me as dividends.
Once I placed Director Lee Jae-hyuk’s embezzlement at the center, all the things that had seemed strange until now fell into place and the larger picture became visible. The unfair treatment QS Express delivery workers were protesting through the strike had merit. The repeated strikes were also understandable. The reason the company had continued to suffer headaches from the strikes while the situation persisted was simple: the company truly had no money left to pay the delivery workers. Director Lee Jae-hyuk had been siphoning it all away in the middle.
Once I could identify both the embezzler and the method, a new judgment document appeared before my eyes.
[Order. The defendant is not guilty.]
[Reason. (…) The evidence submitted is insufficient to prove the defendant’s embezzlement beyond a reasonable doubt. (…)]
What? What did that mean? Director Lee Jae-hyuk acquitted for lack of evidence? That would ruin everything. He would receive a clean bill of health, and resolving the QS Express strike would fall into limbo.
Grhh. Was my judgment wrong? Was Director Lee Jae-hyuk not the missing piece that completed this tangled puzzle?
After pondering for a long while, I re-examined the evidence of Director Lee Jae-hyuk’s embezzlement that I currently possessed. It consisted only of the corporate card usage records and Cha Ye-na’s testimony. Now I understood why an acquittal would result.
If I filed a complaint against Director Lee Jae-hyuk for embezzlement right now, the prosecution would indict him based solely on the evidence I provided without conducting any supplementary investigation. Having spent time at the prosecutor’s office, I knew this was called “intentional loss.” When a prosecutor wants to give a defendant a free pass but finds it burdensome to issue a non-indictment under their own name, they bring the defendant to trial with insufficient evidence. The judge then naturally delivers a not-guilty verdict for lack of evidence, and under the principle of double jeopardy the charge remains permanently acquitted.
Even imposing disciplinary action at the company level would become difficult.
Whew. If I filed a complaint against Director Lee Jae-hyuk now, he would probably bribe the assigned prosecutor the same way he had bribed client company representatives. I could not allow that to happen. I had to prepare irrefutable evidence and then file the complaint against him.