Read Novel Full Chapter 253: Freeze
Chapter 253: Freeze
The roll-up shutter at the business records window was only halfway up when she slid the records request underneath.
"Jiangzhou Xingyao Culture Media Co., Ltd. Domestic enterprise registration basic information form, including shareholder change records."
The person behind the window took the paperwork, flipped through it twice, checked the name on her practice certificate against the firm letter, then turned and walked back inside. Twenty minutes later, two pages came out, the corners still damp from the printer.
In the shareholder column: before June 20, three lines. After June 20, one line.
Jiangzhou Hengyue Capital Management Co., Ltd., 100% capital contribution. The paid-in capital column was blank.
She folded the two pages in half, tucked them into the case file, and checked her phone on the way out: 9:51. The woman in her fifties at the east end of the Enforcement Bureau's third floor had said the day before, "I'll call when the case number comes down." No call. She went herself.
At 10:10, she stood at the window on the east end of the third floor.
"Shen Zhixia. The Xingyao case. Enforcement materials submitted the day before yesterday: five items, seventeen pages."
The woman looked up at her, pulled a kraft paper folder from a drawer. "Case number's down. The handling officer is Judge Gu, last office down the hall. Knock."
Judge Gu was around fifty, a glass cup on his desk, tea leaves settled at the bottom. He spread the seventeen pages out, weighed them down with a pencil, and worked through them one by one. He stopped at page three.
"This commingling. How many items do you have?"
"Three." She handed him the two new pages first. "Dingchang paid five labor fees on behalf of Xingyao. The recipient was Xingyao's outside cameraman, Guo Jianping. June 23. The reference number in the memo matches the serial number on the back of the memory card digit for digit. Three promotional payments went to the verification entities of three reposting accounts. The signatures are all the same hand—Chen Maolin signed on the same day in the legal representative field for Xingyao, the legal representative field for Hengyue Capital, and the financial officer field for Dingchang."
"What about Taiying?"
"Taiying and Sheng'an share the same phone number and email as Dingchang's annual report. Same bank branch office for their accounts. In three months, seven transfers into Dingchang's account, every memo says 'Current Account Transfer.'"
Judge Gu tapped the pencil against the desk. "One more thing. I freeze Taiying, and if what's in that account is someone else's payment for goods, they'll be at my door tomorrow with a contract. What do I answer with?"
"I can't answer that," she said. "I can't see other people's accounts."
Judge Gu wrote two characters on a piece of paper: pending further evidence.
"If you can't answer, write that you can't answer. Put it on paper. Better than guessing." He turned the paper toward her. "I'll give you two paths. One is fast, one is exact."
"The fast one."
"I'll issue a ruling freezing two of their accounts. The written reason won't say 'affiliated company'—it'll say 'the judgment debtor's funds pass through these two accounts for receipts and payments.' That part is verifiable from the records. It holds up on paper." He looked up. "The exact path is to add Hengyue Capital as a party. Xingyao is now a one-person company, with a single shareholder. That takes procedure—request for instructions, service of process, giving the other side a chance to respond. Can't be done today."
"Then freeze today."
"I'll issue the ruling today." He capped the pencil. "But hear me clearly: once it's frozen, it has three days. If it files an objection within three days, you prove all over again that the money is its money. If you can't, I unfreeze. Every cent goes back."
"Three days is enough."
"Whether it's enough is your word. Whether I unfreeze is mine." Judge Gu set the pencil down. "Go. Don't come back this afternoon. I have two hearings."
September 12, 11 a.m. The Enforcement Ruling was signed for and received. The same morning, two Notices of Assistance in Freezing Deposits were delivered to the same branch office.
At 3 p.m., three pages of bank receipts came back.
Dingchang's account: balance 58,203 yuan. Frozen: 45,400. Taiying's account: balance 31,700 yuan. Fully frozen.
[Thud. The accounts are frozen. It's only money if they can move it.]
He Xiufen laid the three pages side by side on the desk, tapping a finger twice on the line that read "58,203." "That means 12,803 in that account can still move."
"The amount frozen is the enforcement subject amount. You can't freeze more than that." Shen Zhixia said, "That's the rule."
"That's the rule." He Xiufen pushed the pages back. "Remember that 12,803. It'll move tonight."
Behind the three receipt pages were three more pages of account statements, pulled by the court's account inquiry at the same time—transactions from last year to this year. She flipped to the second page and her pen stopped.
On the incoming side: seven "Current Account Transfer" entries from Taiying and Sheng'an. On the outgoing side: five transfers, also marked "Current Account Transfer," each one sweeping the balance down to pocket change: March last year, June last year, September last year, January this year, and finally June 19—swept out 114,000, leaving 362 yuan in the account.
The next day, June 20, the legal representative and shareholders were all changed.
"Director He." She turned the second page around. "This sweep happened, and the next day, the handover."
He Xiufen looked at it for a long time without speaking, then pushed her reading glasses up.
She flipped to the third page: August 16, incoming 9,600 yuan, memo "JH–1127," no note, payer was an individual's name, and afterward there was no corresponding outgoing transfer. The money just sat in the account. No one came to collect it, no one returned it.
[Thud. This one. No one came to collect it.]
"This is that 'unfinished package' from the police officer's notification letter," she said.
"Fifteen hundred is retail. Nine thousand six is wholesale." He Xiufen said. "He sold someone else's list, the money went into this account, the package was never delivered. The money sits there, waiting for someone to come reconcile it, and then it gets smoothed over."
At 2 p.m., she went through the deletions one by one.
The judgment said "all reposted mirrors." She arranged the fifteen accounts in five rows, one entry per line: the main account "Jiangzhou Sukan"; the three old mirrors deleted by the operator on August 29; the three that had been wearing the platform's yellow banner that day; the four still reposting at that time; and the four that appeared that night of August 29—Jiangzhou Sukan Live, Jiangzhou Rekan, Jiangcheng Kuaikan, Jiangzhou Sukan (Backup).
One by one, she clicked through. All fifteen pages now showed the same gray text: This video has been deleted by the author. On four of them, a platform notice still sat above the gray text—a yellow frame, its borders darker than the gray letters.
She still split them into two columns: eleven deleted by the author, four carrying the platform's yellow banner. The August 29 page had recorded "seven acted, four didn't." Today's page recorded that all fifteen had acted. Who had done the deleting went in a separate column.
Two phones—one running a timer, one photographing—three shots per account: the account page, the video page, the gray text line. Forty-five shots done, she lifted her finger from the screen; it had stiffened.
She finished page one of the Enforcement Progress Record, dated it, signed it.
The apology statement was posted at 1:09 a.m.
It appeared as the seventh post on the account's homepage, comments disabled, no promotion slot, three lines of body text: "Our company sincerely apologizes for the impact caused to Ms. Tang Guo by the relevant videos posted by our company's account. The relevant content has been deleted. This statement is hereby issued."
Tang Guo held the phone up to her face and read it twice.
"It won't even say the word 'fabricated.'"
"Not writing it is deliberate." He Xiufen took the phone and read it from top to bottom. "It says 'relevant videos,' not 'fabricated videos.' Those words—even after the judgment, it refuses to give them back."
"Then I can't post?"
"You post yours." He Xiufen handed the phone back. "As long as this statement of theirs stays up for less than seven full days, yours keeps hanging there. It can't delete you. Seven days lands on September 18. I'll screenshot once a day."
"What about my name?" Tang Guo said. "They wrote my name once here. Once. In the seventh post."
He Xiufen didn't answer that. She turned the three-line statement over and drew three lines with a ruler:
Delete—September 12, five locations verified, deleted clean. Forty-five screenshots attached.
Clarify—September 12 is day one, seven consecutive days through September 18, daily screenshots. Body text three lines, does not contain the word "fabricated."
Compensate—Platform's joint liability 10,000, paid to the court's enforcement special account on September 12; 45,400 frozen, not yet transferred.
"Record the three items separately." She put the ruler away. "If one falls short, write that one. Don't write 'basically complete' or 'mostly done.' Full means full."
At 6:40, her phone rang.
The number was that string of digits she could recite from memory.
She turned the phone over, hit record, then answered.
"Lawyer Shen." Qin Lang's voice was looser than last time. In the background, a cup clinked against a saucer. "Freezing is easy. Taking is hard."
"Mr. Qin."
"At 3:30 this afternoon, my account was short one sum." He said, "You move fast."
"The court froze it. I didn't take it."
"I don't care who froze it." He laughed. "I've had the objection submitted. I know your playbook: freeze first, make people afraid to touch the money, make the judgment look tidy. But money sitting frozen—you can't carry it off. It's still mine."
"Where are you trying to send it back to?"
"Wait and see the paper." He said, "If you dare deduct it, I have a way to make it go back. This time, not by phone."
The line went dead, clean and abrupt.
She exported the recording, named it "0912–1840," and wrote it into page four of the Call Record: duration 47 seconds, four sentences transcribed verbatim, ending note "claims to have filed enforcement objection, provided no written materials."
[Thud. He says he'll send it back. That means he knows where the money is.]
The noodle shop's curtain lifted. Lu Jibai came in carrying two document envelopes. He set one beside her hand. "Application to Add Judgment Debtor. Header's typed. You fill in the rest."
The other one he didn't open.
"How will he frame the objection?" she asked.
"Three ways." He sat down and straightened his chopsticks. "First, attack the party, say the money belongs to an outsider—Taiying's money isn't Xingyao's money, Dingchang collects on other people's behalf. Second, attack the amount, say the freeze exceeds the subject amount, affects operations, no money in the account for wages. Third, attack the source, say this money has a dedicated purpose—payment for goods, tax payment—so it can't be frozen."
"Which one is hardest to beat?"
"None of them are the hardest." He pulled the bowl over, used his chopsticks to pick the cilantro out one piece at a time and drop it into his own bowl, then pushed it back to her. "What's hard is him finding another route: getting someone to show up with a judgment saying this money is theirs, a separate case confirming title; or backdating a contract, rewriting June as March."
"Then what do we guard against?"
"Fix it today." He tapped the three pages of statements with his chopsticks. "These three pages are in the court file. Make them stamp today's date on the file cover—don't just keep a photocopy. Don't lose a single bank receipt; they carry the bank's business seal. As for a separate case confirming title—" he paused, "if that paper really appears, first go check the contract's signature date and the paper itself. Backdated documents always have a first page that's fresh."
"Three days," she said.
"If he doesn't move within three days, he's preparing something big." He picked up his chopsticks. "Eat. It's getting cold."
She smoothed out the three pages of statements again.
Five dates, written in a row on the paper: March last year, June last year, September last year, January this year, June 19. June 20 went at the end, with a heavy line drawn under it.
Incoming "Current Account Transfer." Outgoing "Current Account Transfer." Taiying and Sheng'an pouring money in on one side, and on the other, the balance swept down to a remainder too small to buy three pieces of candy. Swept, then names and faces changed.
She opened a new work notebook and wrote only two characters on the first page:
Balance the books.
[Thud. Someone has balanced the books for him. More than once.]
Upstairs, Tang Guo's livestream light flickered on, then off.