Empire of Shadows

When one is affluent, even if tens or even hundreds of dollars go missing from their wallet, it’s unlikely they’ll notice.

Even if they sense something is amiss, trying to figure out where the money was spent, or why it didn’t add up, will most likely lead nowhere.

Because they are rich now, they don’t hesitate much when they consume, much less remember many terms and prices in pursuit of the ultimate cost-performance ratio.

It’s only when people are poor and destitute that they become extremely sensitive to the numbers of money.

They can be accurate down to very small figures, even to the decimal point.

Diego was now facing such a problem. He was short of money, so he was now valuing money more than ever before.

He had spent the last few days taking the time to check the money he had left, wanting to see how much more he could scrape together.

The Jede side had already contacted him. They would arrange for a new commissioner to come here to replace Fernandez and communicate with him about some subsequent matters.

In this phone call, the President of Jede had mentioned that both sides would jointly contribute money to help the Rapa government army complete a part of their re-equipment.

For example, replacing one-third first. This way, the financial pressure would immediately drop, and at the same time, the bullets saved by the one-third of soldiers after re-equipping would be equivalent to a fifty percent increase in the bullets for the remaining two-thirds of the soldiers.This would allow them to continue fighting for a while longer.

Then, by the next stage, after fighting for a period of time, they would re-equip again, and finally, they would gradually replace all the equipment.

This plan was very good, and the Jede President had said they were willing to put in an extra share, roughly a 60/40 split.

They would pay sixty percent, and the Rapa government would come up with forty percent.

Of course, this money was not given for free. They needed to hand over some mineral resources to the Jede side for development.

This was a very simple and honest form of cooperation.

From a short-term perspective, Rapa had suddenly obtained such a large sum of money. Handing over some mineral resources to the Jede people for development was actually not a bad deal.

Those mines, even if sold, might not be able to fetch such a high price.

From a long-term perspective, the Jede Republic had not lost out either.

These high-quality mineral resources would eventually turn into an endless stream of wealth, possibly twice, three times, or even more than what they had paid!

One could solve their biggest trouble at the moment, and the other could gain long-term benefits. It seemed like a win-win situation; no one lost.

So now Diego, on one hand, needed to know how much money he could scrape together without touching his federal bank account, and at the same time, he also wanted to understand the production situation of the mining areas under his control.

But when he opened the income and expenditure report summarized from various parts of Rapa over the past three months, he was surprised to find that under the mineral income category, only a few small figures were recorded.

He immediately summoned the butler, pointed to the mineral resources item on the ledger, and asked, ”Why has the mineral income been so low these past three months?”

He flipped back to the previous income and expenditure situations as he spoke. ”The mineral income for these three months is not even a fraction of what it was in a single month in the past. What on earth happened?”

The butler was also a little confused. ”I’ll go and find out.”

Diego’s face clearly showed a trace of anger. ”If they think I can’t hold on, arrange for people to go over and teach them a lesson. Bring all the people in charge of the mines back to me. I want to know where they got the guts to embezzle my money!”

The biggest parasite in Rapa was very angry because his own money had been leeched by others. This was probably one of the funniest jokes of the year.

The butler quickly left Diego’s office. He also had his own office. After all, the butler was also half a master. Not to mention, Diego was too lazy to manage many things at many times and had left everything to the butler to handle.

So the butler also had his own office, and he also had a lot of work to do.

Back in his office, he first dialed the number for the gold mine.

Every month, the income from the gold mine accounted for more than thirty percent of the total mineral resource income. It was already the largest single category of income, bar none.

He made two consecutive calls, but no one answered. He vaguely had a bad feeling.

Afterward, he took out a phone book, flipped through it for a long time, and finally found a number, and dialed it.

As soon as the call was connected, he didn’t wait for the other party to identify themselves, but asked in a slightly dissatisfied tone, ”Why can’t I get through on the phones at the two gold mines?”

The person on the other end of the line was stunned for a moment, and then he realized who it was. He quickly said, ”Your Excellency, Head Steward, I’m not clear about this either. Do you need me to check?”

The butler’s tone was a bit severe. ”There’s no ore coming down from the mountain. You didn’t find anything wrong?”

The person on the other end of the line immediately replied, ”Wasn’t it said before that some mining areas have suspended operations?”

”I thought the scope had expanded, so I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t send any ore. I’ll go and investigate right now and call you back later.”

The butler said ”hmm.” ”Don’t call me. Call President Diego directly. I will be with him.”

”Also, be quick!”

After he hung up the phone, he returned to the president’s office. ”I made a call to the gold mine, but no one answered. I’ve already had someone go and investigate.”

Among all these mineral resources, only the gold mine was relatively valuable.

The price of gemstones, because it was affected by many acquired factors, such as size, whether the color was bright, whether it was clean and transparent, and many other factors, the price was very unstable.

Sometimes, after mining for a whole year, you couldn’t find any gem that could stun the world. So when calculating income, it was still mainly based on the gold mine.

Diego nodded, did not respond to the butler, but continued to look at the ledger.

The sharp decrease in mineral resource income this time had suddenly given him a possibility that he himself was unwilling to admit. Someone was, from the money that belonged to him, scooping up benefits for themselves!

He had to know how these people did it, how much money they took, and how they took it.

Unfortunately, just by relying on these numbers, he couldn’t see these things at all, but he could see if the income was normal.

After an unknown amount of time, perhaps an hour, the phone in front of the president rang. He glanced at the butler, then picked up the phone. ”This is the President’s Office.”

”Mr. President?”

”This is... Just now, the Head Steward asked me to investigate the matter about the production stoppage. I don’t know how to tell you. This might be a big deal!”

Diego frowned. ”What big deal?”

The man swallowed. ”Almost all the mines under your command have been acquired by the federal people. Only one aluminum plant, and an iron mine that has been mined for many years, still belong to you.”

”But I don’t know when they might also become the federal people’s.”

Diego’s eyes widened!

During this period, all he had been doing was exercising his eyes, staring wide-eyed at everything.

”Are you joking with me?” He came back to his senses and emphasized the authenticity of this matter. ”If you’re joking, it’s still not too late to apologize.”

”If you let me find out that you are toying with me, I promise you will regret what you have done!”

The panicked tone of the person on the other end of the receiver didn’t sound like he was lying. ”Your Excellency President, I’m really not lying. I’ve already found out about this through some connections.”

”Including calling our mineral management office, they confirmed that during this period, there have been frequent cases of mines being acquired and registrations being changed!”

Hearing this, Diego couldn’t sit still. He pressed his hands on the desk to stand up. ”Who, who stole my mine?”

...

”Happy cooperation!”

In the hotel in Zhuolan, several merchants from the Federation and several mine owners had signed a new acquisition agreement.

However, this time it was not Lance who had acquired it, but a newly established ’New Hope Mining Company’ that was acquiring these mines.

After the two sides had signed the agreement and had shaken hands, the federal people had sent these former mine owners out.

They did not return to the previous room, but had directly taken a car to the outskirts, and had met Lance in his manor.

”Mr. Lance...” The few of them had greeted Lance separately.

Lance walked out from behind his desk and had them sit down by the sofa. ”Was it smooth?” he asked.

The leader of this group of people nodded. ”Very smooth, Mr. Lance. In this past half-month, we have signed a total of eleven mine transfer agreements. The documents are all here.”

As the man spoke, he took the briefcase from his assistant’s hand. Inside were eleven transfer agreements and proofs of property rights. All the procedures were very complete.

After Lance had checked them one by one, and had confirmed that there were no problems, he had returned these materials to them.

”How much did it cost in total?”

The leader, while putting these documents away, had replied with a smile, ”Less than 200,000.”

New Hope Mining Company was a ”hopeful” shell company that Lance and Senator Cleveland and his group had set up, to harvest the wealth in the financial market.

Hearing this representative state such a low number, although Lance had expected it, he was still surprised by this price.

This meant that on average, the price of each mine was less than 20,000 Federal Sols.

”Most of these mines have already finished mining, their resources are depleted, and there is still some left that has no development value.”

”So their prices are very cheap.”

”If we really want to continue mining, we can still make some money. After deducting all the costs, we might still be able to make a profit of tens of thousands.”

Lance smiled slightly at this number. ”That’s actually quite a lot. A stable return rate of 30%, strictly speaking, this is also a high-quality asset.”

The representative also echoed with a laugh. ”So now we need to package them. Some of the subsequent matters may require your cooperation, Mr. Lance.”

Lance did not refuse. ”I will have my men follow you.”

These people had discussed some of the details with Lance and then had left. The company in the Federation had also been registered, and now it was just waiting to ”go public.”

The Federal ”Financial Securities Supervision Act” had not yet been formally implemented. The congressional side had already passed it, but it would still take some time for it to be implemented and to start to be enforced.

Capitalists and politicians are all connected. Now that the politicians were going to put a leash on finance, then before they had made a move, they would definitely let some ”vicious dogs” leave the field first.

This was also a very coincidental timing. Before the supervision was implemented, any company, as long as it met the annual profit and net market value standards, could go public freely, and be listed on the major exchanges.

Now, New Hope Mining held in its hands mine assets worth about seventy or eighty million Federal Sols, and the management rights and actual profits belonged to the ”New Hope Asset Management Company.” Then for this ”New Hope” to be listed on the federal financial market, there was no problem at all.

It was impossible for those people in the Federation, in order to verify if these mines were real, if they could produce so much mineral resources, and what the final profit was, to run from the Federation to this chaotic Rapa to get the specific situation. They would require the listed company to ”self-certify,” that is, to produce the business reports and profit certificates for the past two years, and also some text and photos, and possibly also some video materials, to increase the persuasiveness.

And then it could be listed.

This period was probably the hottest and also the craziest era for the federal financial industry, because everything seemed primitive, barbaric, without restraint or threat.

People could always see cases in the financial market where the Federation Dream had become a reality, such as a certain investor whose net worth had multiplied several times in just a few days, and there were also some who had, in a short period of time, directly completed their capital accumulation—

There was a high probability that most of these were fake. The purpose of people making up these lies was to let more people enter this industry.

The real harvesters of wealth were the people that people couldn’t see.

Just like the ”New Hope” that was about to be listed and would be sold like hotcakes. After the operation of these professionals, a super dark horse with a market value that was about to break 100 million and an annual profit of over 10 million was about to appear. Who could not be crazy about it?

Lance was also relatively concerned about this matter. Although his shares were not many, as long as the stock detonated the market, this would definitely not be a small sum.

These people had gone to different, working mines, and had taken a large number of photos and even films of the workers who were digging.

Among them, many were holding recent federal newspapers, and also newspapers from other places, as a ”timestamp.”

The photos of this period could not show the date of shooting. In order to prove that the photos were taken at a certain time or period, people would often, when shooting, hold up the newspaper of the day or of the recent period, to increase the persuasiveness.

After all, there had not yet been a relatively mature photo-faking solution. As long as it was faked, there would definitely be a way to tell.

They had also taken away the business records of the mines for the past two years. These all needed to be beautified, and then thrown to the federal exchange, for all the investors and the stock brokerage companies to read.

Falsification, these people were all professionals. So if you wanted to get them all in, you had to come up with some real stuff.

In this era where it was easy to make small money but hard to make big money, an annual return rate of more than ten percent, plus the financial attributes, people would be crazy about it.

In the evening, Vargas (the former owner of the silver mine) had called. ”In the afternoon, Diego’s butler gave me a call, asking me to explain why I had sold the mine, to whom I had sold it, and for how much.”

”I called you in the afternoon, but the call didn’t go through.”

Lance had been on the phone all afternoon. It was normal that the call couldn’t get through.

He knew that Diego would definitely find out about this. He also had some guesses, that it would probably be recently, because he really had no money.

After running out of money, people would want to take stock of how much they could still come up with. With this one check, a problem would definitely be found.

”Did you tell them?”

Vargas shook his head. Although Lance couldn’t see him shaking his head through the phone, ”No, I didn’t say anything. I just brushed them off.”

”I was worried that if I said anything, it might affect you, so I didn’t tell them anything.”

Lance was very satisfied. In fact, it didn’t matter if he had said it. His procedures were reasonable and legal. No one could find any fault.

These things had been eaten by him, and it was impossible for him to spit them out again. Even if the other party was Diego, the president of this country, there was absolutely no possibility.

He had traveled a long way from the Federation to this poor and backward place to live a hard life. It was not to do charity.

In the end, it was still for the banknotes and for the influence.

”If they call you again, or find you, you just tell them the truth. It won’t have any effect on me.”

”Vargas, you have to know, you are afraid of Diego, because you are a person of Rapa.”

”I am not afraid of him, because I am a federal person.”

”By the way!”

”You are also a federal person now. You don’t have to be afraid of him at all. If he hurts you, you can call the embassy. I believe the federal government will be very interested in the matter of you being harmed.”

Why was it that Diego, in the face of Lance’s step-by-step pressing, had never had the thought of directly dealing with Lance?

It wasn’t a question of whether he could do it or not. As long as he had dealt with Lance, it would have meant that he had declared war on the Federation, and the Federation would have directly taken him down.

He just... didn’t want to lose the power of this country, not that he wanted to die!

Listening to Lance’s words, Vargas was stunned for a moment, but soon he had echoed, ”I know what to say to him.”

Not long after this call had ended, Vargas’s door was knocked on with a ”bang bang bang.”

He was now living in the Zhuolan Grand Hotel. His own house and everything had already been sold. After all, his family had all gone to the Federation. Besides himself, there was no one else here.

Compared to the discomfort of living in his own house, to live in a hotel was clearly more suitable for his new identity—a federal investor.

It didn’t cost much every day, but he could enjoy the life of an upper-class person. With such good conditions, why not enjoy it?

The knocking on the door had made his heart beat a little faster, but he still, with courage, had walked to the door and had opened it.

The next second the door had been opened, a hand had grabbed his collar and had pushed him into the living room, and then had pushed him against the wall.

The butler had slowly walked in from outside. He was holding his right wrist with his left hand, and was hanging it in front of him. ”Who did you sell the mine to?”