Off-the-Books Income (1)
Late the next afternoon, James pulled out his phone at the vibration in his coat pocket.
“Well, well. You were in a hurry, weren’t you?”
The screen showed Park Jin-tae’s name.
“Yeah, Manager Park. Calling me all of a sudden like this... what’s going on?”
-James-nim! We’ve got a problem.
“What kind of problem has you making such a fuss?”
-Choi....
Park Jin-tae was about to say Choi Jeong-san’s name, but after a quick glance around, he lowered his voice and continued.
-President Choi Jeong-san is trying to invest all of TY Group’s overseas slush funds into a foreign company.
“Is that so? All of it?”
James had already expected as much; after all, he had planted the suggestion in Choi Jeong-san’s mind himself.
-Yes! Every last cent.
“And the investment target is solid? If he ends up losing the slush fund, that’ll be a disaster....”
He sounded concerned, but the loss of the money was already a foregone conclusion.
-It’s so solid that it’s a problem. A biotech company with a revolutionary new technology that’s been thoroughly vetted by experts. If Choi Jeong-san happens to succeed big with this investment, it could pose a serious threat to our plan.
There was no chance of that happening, not even by the tiniest margin.
“Or maybe you’re the one whose retirement’s looking shaky, Manager Park, not our plan?”
-...That would be the biggest reason, yes.
Park Jin-tae, trapped under James’s magic, had no choice but to lay everything bare in front of him.
“But there’s nothing we can do to stop President Choi from investing right now. What excuse would we even use? Besides, if the target’s been verified by experts, there’s no way to talk him out of it.”
-But....
“Either way, if the investment succeeds and more money gets funneled into that account, wouldn’t that be a good thing for you?”
-For now, it just feels like money being taken out of my own pocket.
Even now, Park Jin-tae was still acting as if Choi Jeong-san’s slush fund already belonged to him.
“Then just think of it as coming back to you multiplied later on. What else can you do?”
-Haaah.
Hearing Park Jin-tae’s heavy sigh, James gave him the kind of instruction that ought to have put him at ease.
“Let’s start the media operation as soon as President Choi’s investment transfer is done.”
-!
“From now on, we’ll keep him so busy he won’t have a moment to breathe, and when the time comes, he won’t even have the spare brainpower to wonder where the investment money went.”
-I’ll start with that bastard Tae-jin.
Choi Jeong-san’s eldest son, Tae-jin, had done such a fine job of carrying his own weight since returning to Korea that he hadn’t needed any special management.
A never-ending string of indulgent, reckless days.
He hadn’t broken his drug habit, which had started in America, and his woman problem had never once let up. In the early days after joining TY Telecom, he had been quiet for a while, careful not to get on his father’s bad side, but once he began settling in, he started causing trouble inside the company too. He had even laid hands on a young female employee in the sales department, and the strategy office had been left scrambling to smooth the matter over.
“You’ve got the material organized already, right?”
-Yes. A few months ago, we quietly secured the documents with journalists I know well and got our stories straight. Every article from here on out will go out under their names.
“Ah. So we’re blowing up the guys who partied with him too?”
-Of course. They’re the opening act. The title of the first piece is The Chaebol Heirs Who Fell for the Temptation of Drugs.
“And Tae-jin’s the face of it?”
-Exactly.
Tae-jin was about to become the perfect villain, the man who had lured innocent, decent chaebol heirs into the world of drugs.
-Their names will be blacked out in the article, so no one can tell at a glance, but we’ll make sure everything comes out through the stock-market rumor mill.
“If we want to get President Choi’s investment money back, we’ve got to make this airtight.”
-The moment the investment is executed, I’ll move.
Park Jin-tae was practically burning with determination.
“Good. At the same time, let’s speed up the share purchases too.”
Any bad news at TY Telecom would immediately drag its stock price down, and the market was especially sensitive to rumors.
-Yes, sir. Leave it to me.
“And once the investment money’s been handled, send me a text too. I need to know when our real work begins.”
-Yes. I’ll contact you.
When Choi Jeong-san thought of Blody, the CFO of the overseas biotech company Duojardin whom he had recently met, he couldn’t help grinning.
“Hah. A walking fortune just crawled right in on its own.”
“......”
“Manager Park. I think I’ve got a real gift for making money, don’t I?”
“I heard Blody already held a briefing for several major domestic companies. It’s possible our investment money may not be as urgently needed as he claims....”
Park Jin-tae secretly wished they could still back out of the investment now.
“The money I’m putting in is a whopping four billion dollars. Duojardin’s expected valuation is only ten billion. Do you know what percentage of the company that gives me?”
“......”
“What do you think happens once Duojardin’s new diagnostic kits start selling all over the world? And what if they even get listed on the NASDAQ?”
Just imagining the equity value soaring to the heavens seemed to amuse Choi Jeong-san so much that he burst into loud laughter.
“Kwahahahahaha!”
In his calculations, there wasn’t even the slimmest opening for anything other than a successful investment.
“...When do you plan to transfer the investment funds?”
“You signed the equity investment contract ages ago. Why the hell hasn’t the transfer been made yet?”
It was a contract he had reviewed after consulting an investment attorney he had brought in specifically for that purpose.
“Send it already!”
Choi Jeong-san was filled with one thought only: he wanted to execute the investment and secure his stake in Duojardin as quickly as possible.
“Then I’ll proceed with the funds... and transfer everything to the account you specified.”
“Go and get it done. Hurry.”
“...Yes, sir.”
“The transfer has been completed, sir.”
If it had been an investment transfer from Korea to overseas, the process would have been complicated, but this was a secret fund transaction moved from one overseas account to another. Just visiting the relevant domestic branch was enough to wrap up the huge transfer without much trouble at all.
“...My money.”
Still, Park Jin-tae comforted himself by picturing his retirement fund, which would swell several times over.
Right. If the money grows through the investment, then I’m the only one who benefits.
Park Jin-tae sent James a text saying the transfer had been completed, then headed back to the company.
Investment money? Equity? You think I’d let you keep an eye on that?
From this point on, a new phase was about to begin.
When James saw the text that had come in from Manager Park, he jumped up at once.
“Su-ji, something came up.”
The transfer of the slush fund was done, so now he had to cleanly wrap up the money on the other end.
Once Blody confirms the deposit and sends the fake guarantee, that’ll be the end of it.
Blody wouldn’t remember today’s events, and by the time Duojardin’s fraud came to light, there would be nothing left—not the investment, not anything else.
“What? We were talking just now, and you’re already leaving?”
“It’s a very important matter.”
Forty billion dollars was, after all, a pretty important matter.
“This is important too!!”
Su-ji had called James after hearing from Chairman Kim Seong-oh that she would be taking over ownership of a subsidiary with annual sales of five trillion won. She had graduated from college this year and gone straight into a job at ST Fashion, one of ST Group’s subsidiaries, and since she had told them she was having lunch separately, she had come out to meet James.
“You need to explain exactly what’s going on!”
“Can’t you just think of it as a gift for our beautiful Su-ji?”
Normally, she might have been willing to melt at her boyfriend calling her beautiful, but this was too huge a gift to accept without question.
“Just what kind of means did you use?”
This was something that just happened to fall into my lap....
James felt that this was the result of something that had happened without any planning on his part, so he didn’t think he had done anything especially amazing, and he didn’t particularly want to brag about it either.
“Good?”
“That’s infuriating!”
“If you want an explanation, ask your father. Why are you grilling me about a gift he says he wants to give his daughter?”
“Because you told him to give it to me!”
“Well, yes, but....”
“How in the world did you sweet-talk Dad into handing over even the subsidiary he treasures like that? My brothers haven’t received anything yet!”
James glanced at his watch and gave a brief explanation. He couldn’t afford to be any later.
“I earned roughly fifteen trillion won in value for ST Group, and in return he wanted to give me one of the subsidiaries.”
“!!”
“But I didn’t want to take it, so we agreed that it would go to Su-ji—my future spouse, if all goes well. End of story.”
“......”
“Go home early today. Or should I say, head back to the company?”
Since she had come out during lunch, she’d need to go back to work.
“Anyway, let’s talk again later. Sorry.”
James left the restaurant without looking back, and Su-ji watched him go, spoon still in hand.
“Future... spouse?”
Everything else was irrelevant. The only word that really mattered to Su-ji was spouse.
“Heehee. So he really hasn’t ruled it out after all.”
And only then did the rest of what he’d said come rushing back to her.
Wait. Fifteen trillion?
Even for the daughter of the chairman of ST Group, fifteen trillion won was such a huge sum that it was hard to get a sense of it at once.
James oppa earned that level of merit?
Su-ji ate the rest of her meal half in disbelief, and even on the way back to the company, her thoughts kept circling the same thing.
Just how did he do it? And if it was that big a deal, shouldn’t the company have already made some kind of move....?
She quickly opened her phone and checked whether there had been a recent disclosure from ST Electronics. Then she found a filing about an investment decision that had been made through the board, along with a notice about its cancellation.
“...They’re canceling the overseas investment decision?”
Since the initial investment alone was worth three trillion won, it had needed board approval, and the matter had to be disclosed to shareholders through a public filing. But now that the investment had been canceled, another disclosure had to be issued, and that was the notice Su-ji was looking at. The listed companies under ST Group were all seeing their stock prices lurch wildly because of it.
Is this what he meant? But....
It wasn’t easy to connect a fifteen-trillion-won achievement with a three-trillion-won overseas investment.
As Su-ji walked while staring at her phone, a man stepped into her path.
Thump.
“Ah! Sor—”
She started to apologize and looked up, and the moment she did, she saw someone she knew very well standing right in front of her.
“...Oppa?”
It wasn’t James, but another brother.
“Come on. We need to talk.”
It was Ju-ho, Su-ji’s second-oldest brother.
“Little brother, I have to get back to work right now....”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m a new employee, you know? If my reputation takes a hit, are you going to take responsibility for that?”
“I already told Mother. She’s dying to know what this is all about too. Not that I need to mention your brother.”
Chairman Kim Seong-oh might have made the decision without much fuss, but for the Kim family, a subsidiary split-off and a gift of shares were enormous events. For the two brothers who had been preparing to inherit ST Group, it was especially shocking news. So as soon as they confirmed the information, they had rushed straight to Su-ji.
“...Fine. I’ll just grab my bag and come right out.”
“I’ll wait at the café in front of the company.”
Su-ji hurried back to the office and told her team leader that she’d been called away and might need to step out for the rest of the day.
“Ah. The secretary’s office already contacted us separately.”
“...I see.”
“Next time, though, I’d appreciate it if you told me yourself before the secretary’s office did.”
“I’m sorry.”
So this was the result of her mother having told them ahead of time.
This could have all been solved if they’d just talked to me first....