Chapter 2378: Financing (Part 13)

Mu Min first surveyed the environment. Apart from a young woman with bound hands and feet being guarded in the corner by a young man dressed in National Army attire, the ground was clean—no blood, excrement, or urine. This improved Mu Min's evaluation of Zhou Wei considerably. It seemed the young man still had some principles.

"How long have you been back?" Mu Min appeared to be making small talk.

"Haven't even been through the door for half an hour yet." Zhou Wei slowly shuffled forward to shake hands with Mu Min. "Welcome, Director Mu, to take charge."

"What's your situation?" Mu Min naturally couldn't ignore Zhou Wei's obviously abnormal walking posture.

Zhou Wei joked about himself: "Sat on a boat all day—blood circulation isn't smooth. Got so angry when I came back that my legs went numb. Haven't recovered yet!"

Heh! I thought you and the secretary had a mutual brawl and you got crippled. Turns out you got yourself so angry you nearly paralyzed yourself. Looking at the awkward way he walks, if it wasn't really numb, it couldn't be faked. It seems your "just got back" really has no major issues. I don't need to go to the Great World pier sentry post to inquire. Mu Min asked with concern: "Is it serious? Why don't you sit down and tell me about the case slowly?"

Zhou Wei quickly declined: "No need, no need! No need to help me—I can still walk... Walking around to loosen up will be fine. Let's go over there to chat." Zhou Wei pointed to another corner of the room, where there was a set of sofas for sitting and talking, also relatively far from everyone else.

Mu Min assigned work: "Little Lian, you two female officers first take the suspect to an empty room in the back, put on handcuffs then untie her. This is tied too tight; if left too long, it might cause muscle tissue necrosis. Also do a routine check. Little Li, Little Zhao, you take four people to seal off the suspect's residence..." At this, Mu Min glanced at Zhou Wei. He immediately interjected: "Room West-102. I've already arranged for a National Army soldier to guard the door. No one should have gone in. You can ask him about the situation."

"Go there, confirm the scene, and first take photos with the portable camera. Follow the highest-level evidence collection procedures. Don't worry too much about consumables. This is a major matter involving a Senator. Use whatever is needed first. I'll sign off immediately." Mu Min watched Zhou Wei's expression while speaking and found him very calm, giving her a sense of the situation.

"The remaining people split into groups, go to the back to reassure other staff, and investigate in groups."

"Act immediately!"

With a few words of assignment, the crack troops she brought all responded "Yes!" and began their respective actions.

Even Little Xu helped lead the way to the back. The room now only had Zhou Wei, Mu Min, and Little Tan who had been left behind. Little Tan was rapidly copying the visitor records stroke by stroke, his heart racing—Will I hear something incredible? Hurry up and get out of here!

"What's the situation?" For individual Senators, Mu Min didn't need to conduct a formal interrogation. First give a lead to let Zhou Wei speak—prepared or not.

"Corruption and bribery!" Zhou Wei said word by word. "Isolating inside from outside!" The last four words were spoken with gnashed teeth.

Isolating inside from outside?! Mu Min secretly complained: Where's your yellow robe?

"Specific situation?"

"I just got back today..." Zhou Wei briefly introduced what had happened, without going on about nearly being angered to paralysis—he wasn't planning to play the pity card.

Mu Min felt there weren't any major issues after hearing it. The Nanyang Company had a big framework but insufficient staff, especially after Sanya was selected as headquarters, making the manpower here in Guangzhou even scarcer. She didn't think Zhou Wei could quickly grasp the situation after receiving an inexplicable urgent telegram summoning him back. In fact, if this secretary hadn't exposed her own faults, Zhou Wei would probably have needed several more hours to figure out the situation—and that was still assuming he was suspicious about being suddenly recalled.

"Mm. Her self-exposure is good for everyone." After listening, Mu Min gave a meaningful summary evaluation.

Zhou Wei was stunned again upon hearing this. He could roughly analyze what all the Senators in Guangzhou who knew about this were thinking. An unwarranted disaster! Moreover, others wouldn't think he was "innocent"...

After speaking, Mu Min personally went around to the back. The on-site evidence collection and first-stage statement taking were basically fine. It looked like this secretary's corruption wasn't something Zhou Wei had deliberately framed but had actually happened. But when Mu Min put herself in Zhou Wei's role, she found that she also wouldn't dare let this secretary take full responsibility—if everything was done by the secretary, and she finally even "isolated inside from outside," then how terrible must you, Zhou Wei, be? A puppet emperor?

Would he, Zhou Wei, dare accept the "incompetent" label? Probably not.

Watching Secretary Zhou, whose "gag" had been removed, point out her bribery items one by one under the female officers' questioning, Mu Min suddenly felt a bit tired. Not to mention the plague ordeal—the natural disaster hadn't been sorted out yet, and now people were playing games with each other again.

She suddenly noticed there was still a naturalized citizen frantically copying in the office and asked Zhou Wei: "What's he doing?" Because this was Zhou Wei's person, Mu Min couldn't drive him away, and Zhou Wei seemed to have no intention of driving him away either, leaving him there awkwardly. It made them afraid to speak loudly.

"I'm preparing to submit the original visitor records as evidence. This is having Little Tan keep a copy so I can see..." Zhou Wei changed to a more tactful way of putting it, feeling it might save some face: "I need to know how many people I have to treat to drinks."

Mu Min took great effort to suppress her laughter, pointing to a sheet that had been copied and asked: "Can I take a look?"

Nonsense—I've already given you the original. Why would I be afraid of you looking at the copy? Zhou Wei waved his hand: "Go ahead."

Mu Min said casually while looking: "Your situation isn't unique. Yesterday we did snap inspections on several departments. There were similar situations, but not as severe as yours. Just adjusting the submission order of current batches, at most holding for one or two days." Mu Min turned and deliberately asked: "What's the longest hold here?"

When Zhou Wei introduced the situation earlier, he hadn't given all the details, mainly because he felt it was too embarrassing that inter-Senator communications were hidden by a secretary for seventeen days. When the person was taken away for interrogation, they would naturally ask about it. Now that Mu Min took the initiative to ask, there was no need to hold back.

"Seven... teen days!"

"Seventeen days... Little Zhou, all responsibility on the secretary. Would you yourself believe this if you heard it?" Mu Min suddenly asked.

Zhou Wei's forehead was almost sweating: why do you ask such sharp questions right off the bat?

"If this happened to me, I wouldn't believe it even if you beat me to death." Zhou Wei answered honestly.

"Never mind whether to believe or not." Mu Min suddenly slid the topic aside. "What are you thinking about that secretary of yours? Just handing her over to us?"

What else can I do? Want you to drag her back to Lingao for a public trial? If it weren't for wanting to express a "serious handling" attitude, I'd want to beat her myself...

Zhou Wei hated to the extreme internally but didn't say the word "die."

"I hope this matter can be handled openly, fairly, and seriously." Zhou Wei was expressing his stance. "I have no objection to however it's handled. I won't shirk any responsibility I should bear."

Mu Min secretly praised his cleverness. "Okay, we'll definitely do that. But I need to confirm something here. Is there a personal relationship between Secretary Zhou and you? Which department does she belong to?"

Zhou Wei understood that "personal relationship" was asking whether there was a substantive relationship. He had to explain: "She was... personally selected by my wife after she became pregnant. Her position is in the General Office. Personal relationship... yes, there is..."

This bold and fiery young lady had quite suited his taste back then. Unexpectedly, he had actually stumbled because of her!

"You don't need to be evasive. The men in our Senate are all candid about this aspect. Brazenly saying: 'any man would be like this.'" Mu Min spoke with sarcasm. "I'm worried about a repeat of what happened when handling the Yang Jihong case..."

Zhou Wei's face was about to turn into an embarrassed emoji. He hurriedly defended: "No, no, absolutely not. For the Nanyang Company affairs, I've been exhausting my mind, running around every day. I haven't touched her for two or three months..."

"Alright! Sigh, when it involves the life secretaries of you people, things become hard to handle. We'll be gentler with the preliminary detention and interrogation, and also try to make the detention conditions better. Don't worry about her end. We'll handle it according to the principles you raised." Mu Min lost interest and just wanted to quickly sell the favor, wrap up, and leave.

Mu Min picked up the copied list, tapped her finger on it, and asked Zhou Wei: "Do you know who she offended that triggered this?"

Zhou Wei hurried to answer: "Based on the time period she confessed, I checked. Only two Senators came in person: one is Ren Youzi, one is called Chu He. I just don't know which one she offended."

Zhou Wei prayed internally that it definitely shouldn't be Ren Youzi. When he had taken over the Southeast Asia Company, he had heard about this "Ren Youzi's" performance during audits. Mu Min suddenly asked this—could there be some channel to smooth things over? Is this... selling me a favor?

You still "don't know which one she offended." Isn't everyone on the list someone you've offended? Didn't you just say you need to treat everyone on the list to drinks? She stared at what Zhou Wei had just said and criticized it internally. Could it be he still doesn't know these people have already connected?

"Today several Senators jointly submitted a proposal to Old Liu. They're probably in a meeting now." Mu Min specially gave a hint.

"The secretary matter is easy to solve. You'd better think more about your own situation." Mu Min put the paper on the desk. "The Nanyang Company is a national policy company. Everyone in the Senate won't allow its establishment to fail. This is the big principle! Hurry up and deal with it, and put your energy on official business." With that, she left without looking back.

(End of Chapter)