Chapter 220: Greed

Laini put down the phone, picked up the cigar placed next to the ashtray, and took a puff.

"He said we need to meet and talk."

There were two other commissioners in the office. They were both commissioner representatives sent by the Liji Group headquarters to handle some work.

Actually, it wasn't just the two of them, there was also a whole legal team.

Lanse was just one of their clients, and there were some similar, but not completely identical, situations.

"So the headquarters has decided to completely tear up the agreement?", Laini looked at the two commissioners and frowned. "Will this bring us some negative evaluations?"

Both professionals were very professional managers. In fact, adding professional in front of the special noun manager can make people feel their heartless attitude.

Laini knew one of them, called Buliqi, one of the partners of the company.

This guy's status in the company wasn't low, but his reputation was very bad. Some people said he was the executioner of the board of directors, specifically doing some things that the board of directors wanted to do but couldn't save face to do.

For example, laying off employees, etc., these would all be handed over to the department headed by Buliqi to do.

He was a "cold-blooded and ruthless" person. This was everyone's evaluation of him. The words he said most often were "The company's rules and regulations didn't allow me to let you go," just like a robot.

He wouldn't talk about human feelings with anyone, and even had very strict requirements for himself, strictly following the company's rules and regulations and work manual.

This time coming to New Jincheng, Buliqi was the main one.

"Laini, you can question the company's decision, but before the company has a new decision, what we have to do is obey."

Laini sneered. The status of a branch general manager was definitely stronger than this dog that bit people indiscriminately, but many people on the board of directors liked this dog very much.

Easy to use, obedient, and ruthless to himself. He hadn't developed his own faction in the company until now. This was also one of the reasons why the directors were assured to use him.

When they needed it, they could just find a reason to kick him out, and could also push all the mistakes to him.

This stupid dog!

This time the company arranged commissioners and the legal department to come, just to completely tear up some fruit and agricultural product sales contracts that had already been signed.

The explosion case of the New Jincheng Hazardous Materials Administration caused Congress to give this new department more rights. The prohibition situation in the whole country suddenly became more severe, no longer like playing around.

Many regions began to prohibit alcohol on a large scale, and the Hazardous Materials Administration also began to enter the state. They passed the "novice period."

Not just New Jincheng, many regions' Hazardous Materials Administration began to increase the crackdown on smuggling and selling alcoholic beverages. They would even arrest people who drank in public and throw them into prison for three months or half a year.

But strangely, the unprecedented severe situation didn't make people lose their enthusiasm for drinking. Instead, the number of people drinking in many regions became more.

This also led to the price of liquor starting to soar, not to mention, and even the price of some brewing raw materials also started to soar crazily.

They couldn't afford liquor, so they brewed it themselves. Among many brewing methods, grape brewing was a relatively easy one.

In many regions with a tradition of home brewing, many home brewing workshops had appeared, and many agricultural products used for brewing had started to increase.

As a country with a free trade market, when demand increases significantly, it will enter a seller's market, and they started to raise prices.

At the end of January and early February, the purchase price of ordinary grapes per ton was still seventy-seven or eighty dollars—this was the price on the purchase agreement they signed with farmers, but the price they sold to the outside was over one hundred dollars.

But now, the selling price per ton had already risen to one hundred and seventy-five dollars. In just over a month, the profit soared from over ten percent to about one hundred and fifty percent!

Such high profits were enough to make this group of capitalists shout "We want freedom" and trample on the law.

The company's price trend analyst believed that as the power of the Prohibition Act began to spread, and it was still fermenting, the prices of any agricultural products that could be used for brewing, such as grapes, corn, potatoes, and wheat, would continue to rise.

They believed that the listing price of grapes in the first quarter of this year might break through three hundred dollars per ton!

You have to know that the selling price was rising, but the purchase price they signed with farmers before hadn't changed, basically less than ninety dollars.

Three or four times the profit, and it might be even more!

In the face of such huge expected profits, they certainly wouldn't admit these contracts they sold at a price of over one hundred dollars per ton before.

After the discussion of the board of directors, they unanimously decided to tear up this price and re-sign a new sales contract, or simply not sign it.

Doing so certainly had commercial moral risks and moral accusations, but this was a profit problem of tens of millions. What's wrong with being scolded a few times?

If the scolding wasn't fierce, donate some money to the charity organization under their own name, do charity for themselves, and public opinion would subside.

If the scolding was fierce, just find a few people to be scapegoats and throw them out, and then the board of directors would apologize collectively.

If bowing and saying sorry could bring back tens of millions of profits, they could bow from morning to night.

This was also the reason why they sent Buliqi over. New Jincheng had the most contracts here, and they needed the sharpest spear without flexibility!

For those with few liquidated damages, such as only thirty percent, fifty percent, they directly tore up the contract, and then arranged for the legal department to sue those people.

Many people didn't want to sue large group companies. Large companies had a very strong legal system and also knew many people in the judicial department.

It wasn't that they couldn't win, but winning required paying a great price, perhaps paying thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.

This expenditure might not be as much as the amount mentioned in the liquidated damages, so they would most likely choose to settle out of court—Liji Group would return their deposit, and then give a little compensation symbolically, thousands of dollars, or hundreds of dollars.

For those with more liquidated damages, such as one time, two times, or more, they would find a way to communicate.

If that didn't work, they would still sue. Anyway, wanting them to let go of the profits put into their pockets was simply impossible!

Drag it out! They had plenty of experience!

As for the farmers?

With the style of the three major agricultural trading groups such as Liji Group, whichever farmer dared to mention re-signing a price-hike contract, they would let the legal department sue these farmers until they couldn't even afford to wear pants.

Not only would they be robbed of the grapes of the first quarter of this year, but even their manors, farms, everything, would be lost to them because of losing the lawsuit!

Federal capital consortiums have always been like this, not at all like the propaganda they put out—

A capitalist made a mistake, and under the effect of contract spirit and fairness and justice, compensated a staff member tens of thousands of dollars.

This kind of story can actually be heard in many places around the world, such as an old man falling in a shopping mall, and then the shopping mall compensating tens of thousands of dollars.

Perhaps this case does exist, but they won't tell you that the old man might only get a few dozen dollars in the end.

And the remaining money basically went into the pockets of lawyers and certain people.

In front of big capital, ordinary people never get fairness and justice.

Laini knew the reason why they did this. In fact, this kind of thing hadn't happened only once or twice.

Conversely, it was actually the same. For example, when the price of agricultural products plummeted, they demanded that customers must fulfill the contract on one hand, and demanded to re-sign contracts with farmers on the other hand, otherwise they would organize the three major agricultural businesses to refuse to purchase their crops.

Capitalists' pursuit of profit is shameless and hot. No one can stop them from putting the most money into their own pockets.

Buliqi looked at Laini who was thinking. His mouth corners lifted slightly. His "backer" told him that if he could perfectly handle this work.

Then his backer would nominate him as a senior partner on the board of directors and be qualified to hold no more than three ten-thousandths of the shares.

Of course, this part of the shares didn't have inheritance rights, nor did it have the right to freely sell and transfer. He could only choose to keep it himself, and return it to the board of directors voluntarily after his death or voluntarily.

This sounds very unfair, but for some high-level workers, this is their ultimate dream, to become one of the company's shareholders!

So this time, no one could stop him.

"Continue to make phone calls, Laini. You don't need to think about how we do it. That's my business. What you need now is to do your job well."

"Pick up the receiver, and then dial the phone, tell them, the contract has a problem!"

Laini looked at Buliqi and shook his head. He really didn't know the situation!

But this had nothing to do with him. He would explain the situation to those partners.

The next morning, Lanse came to the branch office building of Liji Group, a sixteen-story building located in the city center of New Jincheng.

There were even taller buildings around it!

In fact, this was very incredible. In some countries where even three or five-story buildings were rare, the Federation had already started to build high-rise buildings over two hundred meters.

Lanse let people park the car well. Just as he entered the lobby on the first floor, he saw several guys wearing flat-top hats cursing and waving the documents in their hands, shouting loudly "I f***ing want to sue you."

Several security guards were blocking them, trying to drive them out.

A man in the lobby who should be the person in charge took the initiative to greet him. Of course, he also had some vigilance looking at Lanse, blocking between Lanse and those people, for fear that Lanse would suddenly take out a camera and photograph these.

"Sir, is there anything I can do for you?", he had a smile on his face. Although he wasn't old, his hypocritical tricks were already very mature.

Lanse nodded. "Yesterday Manager Laini called me, saying that he invited me over today to talk to you about the contract."

The young man always maintained that hypocritical smile, but his waist bent a little.

Those who could be invited to talk were basically rich people. He didn't know Lanse, but he knew Lanse was a rich person. Being respectful to rich people was his instinct.

"Sir, please walk from here with me.", he led the way in front, walking toward the elevator.

Lanse asked casually, "What's wrong with those people?"

This young man had no change in expression. "I don't know very well, but they clearly didn't have a suitable attitude, so they could only be asked to leave first."

"I believe you must be different from them, sir."

Lanse was stunned after hearing this, and then couldn't help but laugh. He looked up and down at this young man. "Do you know?"

"You threatened the wrong person."

The young man's mouth corners widened. "I didn't understand what you were saying, sir!"

Lanse reached out to help him smooth his collar. "You'd better pray that Laini doesn't make me angry!", then he retracted his hand and patted the young man's arm. "Cherish your good body now."

Saying this, a ding sounded, the elevator door opened, and Lanse walked in.

The young man always maintained that smile, but he could vaguely see the arrogance in his bones through his eyes.

After all, it was the three major agricultural businesses. Even if it was just a manager of the lobby or something, to many ordinary people, it was a solid middle class, or even a small remarkable figure.

The elevator door finally cut off the line of sight between the two. The young man retracted his smile, looked coldly at the few people who were still making trouble at the front desk, and frowned. "Didn't you eat?"

"They have already affected our work. Drive them out!"

"Immediately!"

The security guards who were pushing and shoving heard this, and someone pulled out a rubber stick. Reasoning couldn't fill the stomach, but salary could.

Laini's office was on the top floor. The elevator speed wasn't fast, but it was very stable. When it stopped, it was almost impossible to feel any weightlessness or increase in weight.

Only felt a slight pause, ding, the door opened.

As soon as the elevator door went out, it was a large room. There was a separate front desk here, and several sets of sofas beside it.

On the newspaper rack were today's newspapers and recent magazines. The blonde girl at the front desk stood up. "Sir, hello, is there anything I can do for you?"

Lanse stepped on the soft carpet and walked to the counter. "Manager Laini asked me to come over to talk about the contract."

"May I know your name?", the girl asked.

"Lanse."

The girl had a moment of loss of focus. Her expression seemed to be a bit solidified, but soon a smile appeared again. She lowered her head and started to flip through the notebook.

Then she picked up the phone again. "Mr. Lanse is here, right here with me... alright."

She said this and hung up the phone, bypassing the counter.

She was wearing a white-bottomed red-dot top, which looked very thin, the material should be good, and then a bright red step skirt. This was a very fashionable outfit.

"Please come with me, Mr. Lanse.", she led Lanse to the innermost part, knocked on the door, and after getting Laini's permission, she pushed the door open.

"Please come in."

Just as Lanse entered, Laini walked out from behind the desk.

The reason he did this was not only because Lanse's order total was over eight hundred thousand, but more importantly, Lanse's reputation here.

"I'm very sorry to disturb you, Mr. Lanse. I apologize ten thousand times for this!", he held Lanse's hand with both hands and apologized as soon as he came up.

Then he looked at the secretary. "Send the best coffee, immediately!"

The secretary ran away.

Laini welcomed him to sit by the sofa. "I don't know how to open my mouth, Mr. Lanse. The company's decision makes me feel ashamed!"

Lanse watched his performance quietly. Laini was also a professional manager. What he showed you was never the real him.

Seeing Lanse not answering, he could only continue to say, "The company hopes to re-sign the agreement with you, because of our internal technical problems, we used the wrong base in terms of price."

"In fact, the price of grapes in the first quarter of this year will exceed three hundred dollars per ton, but we only gave it to you at a price of over one hundred."

"We can't bear such a huge loss, so the company hopes to re-sign in terms of price, or sign a supplementary contract."

"We can give you a preferential price of two hundred and seventy dollars. This is the lowest price I opened today."

Lanse exposed a smile after hearing him say these things. "I have already paid the deposit, and the contracts have all been signed. You tell me to raise the price at this time?"

He shook his head. "Manager Laini, I am shocked by the low level of morality of your company, but I refuse."

"Everything is according to the contract. Either give me grapes, or give me...", he recalled, but this number had zero and whole. "It should be liquidated damages of over four million."

"Things, or money, you have to choose one."

Laini also had a headache. "I actually also want to respect our contract, but the general company side..."

While talking, suddenly someone pushed the door open and walked in. Lanse glanced back. It wasn't the secretary.

It was two young people.

One of them had obvious arrogance on his face. He looked back at Laini, Laini could only smile awkwardly, and even whispered "Sorry."

Lanse didn't move, just looked at the two who came in.

"Mr. Lanse, hello, I am Buliqi of the Legal Department 2 of Liji Group. Because company employees used wrong numbers when calculating prices, it led to errors in our prediction of prices."

"Now we specially came from the capital, just to correct these errors."

The two walked to the other side of the sofa and sat down.

"Manager Laini should have already told you just now, we can give you a preferential price..."

Lanse interrupted him directly. "I refuse."

Buliqi didn't care at all, and even exposed a smile. "Mr. Lanse, this is not discussing with you."

"And I read the contract between you and the company. The liquidated damages are obviously unreasonable. I have reason to suspect that you may have colluded with the involved employees to use illegal contracts to extract company benefits."

Lanse said this and stood up. He looked down at Buliqi, and looked at Laini. There was no joy or anger on his face, just very calm.

"Is this the purpose of you calling me here today?", he shook his head. "This may be the stupidest thing you have done. Manager Laini, have a good chat with your stupid friend."

"I hope that the next time you call me, it is to tell me that you intend to fulfill the contract, rather than showing your greed like a clown!"