"Even if this company were entirely your private enterprise, the money in the company accounts isn't something you can just take as you please. Never mind the fact that you're just a director and a major shareholder," Yi Anguo said with a smile. "Call the police. It looks like he has no intention of confessing."

"No, no, no! We're all family here, why make things so unpleasant?" Chen Qingfeng said with a placating smile, realizing Yi Anguo was serious.

"That's right. You are the Chairman's cousin, after all. I don't want to get rough with you, either," Yi Anguo nodded, advising him in a good-natured tone. "But the prerequisite is that you must come clean about everything you've done in the company over the years. Tell me how much public funding you've embezzled, how the other senior executives and financial staff collaborated with you, and how much they took for themselves."

"That's not it! I fought alongside the Chairman to build this company. Isn't it only right that I get some benefits from it?" Chen Qingfeng said resentfully. "The Chen Corporation makes so much money every year. The little bit I take is just a drop in the bucket. Even the Chairman turned a blind eye and never said anything, so why are you coming after me the moment you take over?"

"I don't want to come after you either! But your appetite keeps growing. You opened your mouth and asked for fifty million. Did you really expect me to cooperate, sign off on it, and let you get the money?" Yi Anguo retorted, shaking his head.

"I swear I wasn't lying about that fifty million! It really was for buying land to build a factory. No matter how greedy or audacious I am, I'd never dare to ask for fifty million out of the blue. I don't have that kind of nerve," Chen Qingfeng quickly cried foul.

"Even if your story about buying land and building a factory is true, what about the joint venture with the German company? Is that real too?" Yi Anguo pressed. "The German company you mentioned is just a shell company. Does a company like that really have that kind of technological strength? You don't need to make any more excuses. Just explain everything clearly. For the sake of you being the Chairman's cousin and your past contributions to the Chen Corporation, I can let you walk away unscathed."

After speaking, Yi Anguo turned and left. He wouldn't interrogate Chen Qingfeng personally; he was just making his position clear. He advised him that it would be best to confess quickly so the matter could be handled leniently and privately. Otherwise, it would have to be dealt with by the book.

In truth, whether Chen Qingfeng confessed or not didn't really matter. Many of his dealings wouldn't withstand scrutiny. A serious investigation would undoubtedly reveal how much company money he had embezzled over the years.

Yi Anguo's goal wasn't just to track down the funds embezzled by his subordinates. He wanted to completely restructure the subordinate factories and enterprises. He intended to bring all financial and personnel management authority back to the head office, centralizing all power. From then on, the main office would handle all arrangements, policies, and compensation uniformly.

This was a far cry from the current situation, where front-line employees of the same Chen Corporation received vastly different pay. Some factory workers could earn 2,000 yuan a month, while others received just over 1,000. Moreover, each factory had a different uniform, creating a motley appearance that utterly lacked the image of a major corporation.

His treatment of Chen Qingfeng was relatively polite, allowing him to keep some face. As for the others, if there was evidence against them and they refused to cooperate, confess, or return the embezzled funds, they were immediately taken away by the police for investigation.

Throughout the Chen Corporation's other factories, arrests were made and confessions were given as needed, while the financial audit department launched a thorough review of the company's accounts. The vacant positions were filled through a large-scale recruitment drive. Shenzhen was teeming with talented people; there was no shortage of managerial expertise.

The restructuring yielded remarkable results. Not only did it achieve the goals of centralization and unified management, but it also recovered a significant amount of embezzled funds.

Surprisingly, Chen Qingfeng wasn't the executive who had embezzled the most. He had only taken several tens of millions, less than one hundred million yuan.

Another executive, the head of Hua Feng Precision Manufacturing, had used various schemes to embezzle 120 million yuan. While serving as the head of Hua Feng, he had also invested in another precision manufacturing plant. He would divert the company's raw materials directly to his own factory and transfer technological breakthroughs from the company's R&D center to his personal firm. Yet, the company's annual R&D expenditure remained consistently high, meaning the Chen Corporation's R&D budget was essentially fattening his own pockets. The company paid for the research, but any achievements became his personal property.

Yi Anguo was actually quite interested in this Hua Feng Precision Manufacturing plant. Many of its major clients were domestic mobile phone brands, including some internationally renowned ones. Furthermore, Hua Feng was quite large, employing over ten thousand people and ranking among the top few of the Chen Corporation's subsidiary factories. Its business performance, however, was abysmal. Breaking even was considered a success; making a profit was out of the question because the entire management was rotten to the core. Any profit they made was not enough for them to divide amongst themselves.

The reason Yi Anguo was interested in this factory was that, before his rebirth, he had worked for many years at a publicly listed company that was also in precision technology manufacturing. In fact, he had considered developing his own industrial enterprise, especially in technology manufacturing, but he felt the conditions weren't yet right. For now, he still needed to build up his strength.

Furthermore, Yi Anguo discovered that the industries of the factories under the Chen Corporation were messy and disjointed, failing to form a complete upstream and downstream industrial chain. Of course, once a business grows large enough, it will inevitably branch out. An electronics manufacturer might also produce medical products, and a phone maker might also build cars or invest in new energy. The most crucial things were unified management and a unified development plan.

Therefore, Yi Anguo's first move was to integrate all the factories and companies under the Chen Corporation. He planned to forge them into a comprehensive mega-corporation, essentially establishing a corporate group under the Chen Corporation umbrella. Although these enterprises would develop independently, they would be managed uniformly, with a centralized financial system, unified human resources allocation, and standardized employee compensation. However, the pay wouldn't necessarily be identical. After all, the conditions and working environments of each factory were different, but at the very least, the disparities couldn't be too large.

Thoroughly restructuring the company was certainly not a task that could be completed overnight. Yi Anguo couldn't possibly handle every detail himself. He only needed to communicate his requirements and goals, and others would execute his vision. All he had to do was wait for the results.

Then, the very thing Yi Anguo had been worried about happened. His eldest sister called him. "Is Fu Huanhuan dating someone over there?"

"Big sister! I haven't heard anything. Who told you that?" Yi Anguo asked in surprise.

"Huanhuan told me herself," his sister said. "She said a boy is pursuing her. He's a year younger than her and wants to call her his 'older sister.'"

"Huanhuan is only twenty-one this year, right? That means the boy is only twenty. Maybe he genuinely and simply wants an older sister figure?" Yi Anguo suggested after a moment's thought.

"How is that possible? Why would he want her as a sister? What's he after?" his sister said disbelievingly. "First, he calls her 'sister,' and next, he'll be thinking of making her his wife."

"So what does Huanhuan say?" Yi Anguo asked.

"When does Huanhuan ever tell the whole truth? She also said he just wants her as a sister," his sister replied.

"Big sister, what are you getting at? Do you want me to send Huanhuan back?" Yi Anguo asked helplessly.

The inevitable had finally come. When a girl grows up, it's only natural for boys to pursue her. Fu Huanhuan wasn't very tall, only about 1.58 meters, but she was quite pretty. It was perfectly normal for boys to like her.

"Well, what else can we do if we don't send her back? Your brother-in-law is still counting on her to take care of us in our old age!" his eldest sister exclaimed. "If she marries someone from another province, we'll barely see her a few times in our entire lives. How can we expect her to provide for us and give us a proper burial? It's questionable if we'll even see her before we die. If it were just that, it might be manageable. As long as she has a good life, we'd be unhappy, but we'd manage. But she'd be marrying so far away. If she's mistreated by her in-laws, there will be no one there to help her. And what if things don't work out later, and she ends up divorced with a child? That would be even more trouble. It's just like you and that Wang Liping. You two weren't even married, had a daughter, and she just up and left."

"Big sister! Stick to talking about Huanhuan. Why are you dragging me into this?" Yi Anguo said, exasperated.

"Am I wrong?" his sister retorted. "Look at you, you're almost thirty, raising a daughter on your own out there, and you don't even dare to come home for the New Year. Aren't you just afraid of people laughing at you because your wife ran off with another man?"

"Big sister! It's not that no woman wants me; it's that too many women want to marry me, and I don't know which one to choose! The reason I don't come back for the New Year is that Mom and Dad are gone. There's no point. Why would I be afraid of being laughed at? What a joke!" Yi Anguo explained. "Besides, our house back home is falling apart and it's freezing in the winter. If I went back, even getting a proper meal would be a hassle. It's too much trouble."

His sister sighed. "But you can't just not come home for the New Year for the rest of your life."

"I heard from Huanhuan and our third sister that you're doing well for yourself out there, that you've made a lot of money. So why don't you hurry up and build a new house back home?"

"Sure, I can do that. Why don't I send you the money, and you can have my brother-in-law find some people to build me a magnificent new house, a lavish villa," Yi Anguo said with a laugh.

"Having your brother-in-law hire people to build it is no problem," his sister replied. "But you have to come back to see it for yourself and choose a spot to build it, don't you? And how big do you want it? How many floors? What style? You need to come back and discuss these things to decide properly! It's the perfect opportunity. You can bring Huanhuan back and take care of the house-building at the same time. Then, when the New Year comes around, you can come home to celebrate. It'll also show those people in the village that you're doing well, that you're not a failure, and that there's certainly no shortage of women who want to be with you. How well are you really doing? If you don't come back, who will ever know? As the old opera saying goes, 'Returning to one's hometown without showing one's wealth is like wearing embroidered clothes in the dead of night.'"

Yi Anguo was left speechless by his sister's words. After thinking about it, he had to admit she was right.

It seemed he really should make a trip back home to get the house built. As for whether he would return for the New Year, that could be decided later. With a new house standing there, the villagers wouldn't dare to look down on him. Especially if it was the most beautiful and magnificent house in the entire village. Who then would still dare to say they looked down on Yi Anguo?

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