Yu Dynasty Yingdala (4338-4636)

[Wu Han]

Issue 1: August 4283


Above: The Xiandai Tower pierces through the sky, as clouds crawl down the mountains to blanket the Hazhou Financial District

Xiandai Corporate Headquarters Raided; Bribery Scandal Threatens Indralan Economic Success Story
Story by Tan Dongsheng, 15 August 4283

HAZHOU, Shu — It was a surprisingly brisk morning in Hazhou this Monday, considering the time of year, as fog moved in from the mountains and SPS investigators descended on the Xiandai Group corporate headquarters. It cannot be ignored that ironically, each of the fastidious and deadpan SPS agents disembarked from one of sixteen Xiandai A35 light commercial passenger vans. Attorney General Xu Jindong spoke from a stuffy room in Tian'an where he described that following reports of bribery between Xiandai and key government officials in the government, the Supreme Prosecution Service had decided to raid the Xiandai Group headquarters in order to look for physical evidence of wrongdoing. Today, Chief Financial Officer Wang Junpyo, brother of CEO Wang Tangfei, and one of the nation's principal pillars of industry was escorted by police into an SPS Provincial Office to meet with prosecutors. This sent a message that shocked even a jaded public: Indrala’s economic order is under threat.


Wang Junpyo entering the Shu SPS Office

For the duration of the Fourth Republic, successive right-wing governments have deregulated monopoly restrictions, lowered business burdens and radically privatized the economy which has led to a number of families who have worked to aggressively squeeze out smaller businesses and international competitors. Those groups came to be known as the caizu, or “rich clans” in Indralan, and they dominate Indrala’s economic life to this day, recharging a sluggish and slow to no growth economy which plagued the Third Republic. Many of these groups are considered "too-big-to-fail" and as such, conservative and liberal politicians have pandered to their needs in the past. As Feng Songjo, Professor of Economics at Indrala University puts it:

To Indralans, caizu have two faces. On one hand, caizu symbolize corrupt ties between business and politics, so people call for reforming caizu. On the other hand, the economy is so heavily dependent on caizu that people fear that shaking them too much might make them collapse.

In the past, caizu conglomerates have been able to evade criminal investigation and prosecution through pulling their insurmountable weight in politics and economics and as Wang Junpyo heads into criminal investigation, it remains yet to be seen whether the Wang family will accept responsibility, or redirect the crosshairs of attention to embattled Chancellor Xuan Shuren, the family of whom owns nearly $76 million INS in Xiandai Group stock. Further, how the public will respond to this latest example of caizu-governmental conspiracy will be important to watch over the coming weeks. Either way, the economic order of Indrala could be shaken to its core.

Xiandai Group stocks closed at 2134.13 INS per share today.

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Originally posted by Wu Han on 7 October 2017.