The richest man started taking advantage of loopholes after joining Alibaba.

"May 19, 2022, the first transaction, 870,000."

Chen Wei spoke softly, but every word was clear.

The office door was closed, keeping out the sounds from the hallway.

His index finger moved upwards from the first red dot along the arrow and stopped on the first square.

The box contains an English name followed by the abbreviation of the place of registration, BVI.

The handwriting is neat and the strokes are very fine; Chen Wei must have spent a lot of time drawing this picture.

"The entity is registered as the source of the revenue."

He read out the name in the box.

Whitecap Holdings Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands.

He paused for a moment.

"A shell company, with a registered capital of $1, no actual business operations, and no office address."

"The registration agent is an intermediary; there are hundreds of companies in the BVI that do this kind of registration, and this one isn't even in the top ranks."

"I had someone investigate this agency; they represent over four thousand shell companies, and Whitecap is just one of them."

"Nothing special could be found."

Lin Che looked at the box on the diagram without saying anything.

Chen Wei speaks like he's sending a WeChat message—no preamble, no transition, he just goes on and on.

"There's not much to find with these shell companies, so I didn't waste my time on them."

"Go straight for it."

Chen Wei moved his finger to the second box.

There is a thin line between the two boxes, and the words "holding on behalf of someone else" are marked next to the line.

"Whitecap is backed by another entity."

"Meridian Trustees, registered in the Cayman Islands."

His speaking speed remained constant, and the pauses between each word were very even.

It's like reading a report that has been checked many times.

The investigation, which lasted more than three months, was condensed into these few pages, and he spoke of it without any emotion.

"This one in the Cayman Islands is cleaner than the first floor; it has a registered office and a nominal director."

"The annual report can be found in the Cayman Companies Registry, which shows that this entity has existed since 2019."

"Even earlier than the founding of the Ark."

"But the nominal director is an agent, so the pursuit stops at this point."

He pulled his finger back and placed it on the edge of the folder.

The ink mark on the edge of my nail is still there, a bit darker than when I saw it last Wednesday, as if I've flipped it over many times in the past few days.

"We traced the first two layers of nominee shareholding, but we couldn't trace it further down to the Cayman Islands layer."

"But one clue was left: the agent's number."

"For the second stroke, I changed direction."

Move your finger to the second red dot.

"July 6, 2022, the second transaction, 114 million."

"The source of the revenue has changed; it's from a different entity."

Kelvin Pacific Limited, registered in Samoa.

Chen Wei turned to the second page of the diagram.

The lines on this page are denser than on the first page, and there's one more box.

There are more words next to the arrows than on the first page, and some of the words are so small that you have to look closely to see them.

"The shareholding structure in Samoa is different from that in the BVI; there's an additional layer of trust in the middle."

"Trust is a very useful thing; once you add a layer inside, the difficulty of tracing it doubles."

He tapped the second-layer box with the tip of his pen.

"The trustee is a Singaporean company called Asia Pacific Trust."

"The Singapore company has a physical office, located in an office building on Orchard Road."

"I had someone check it out, and the company is real, and the business is real too; they help clients design cross-border trust structures."

"The client list is not publicly available."

He pulled a sheet of printed paper from a compartment in the folder and placed it next to the diagram.

The paper contained a passage of English text, printed out, seemingly taken from an email, dated November of last year.

"Asia Pacific Credit's response was very polite, stating that the trustee's obligation requires them not to disclose the principal's information."

Chen Wei glanced at Lin Che.

"It means they know who it is, but they're not saying."

He took the printed paper back and put it back into the folder.

"The second attempt reached three levels, but it stalled at the Singapore stage."

He placed the diagram on the second page side by side with the diagram on the first page.

The arrows on the two pieces of paper point in the same direction, but their paths are completely different.

One went to the Caribbean, and the other went to Southeast Asia.

Lin Che did not respond.

Two sums of money, two completely different paths, one ended in the Cayman Islands, the other ended in Singapore.

He looked away from the diagram and glanced at the glass of water on the table that had gone cold.

The light outside the window changed slightly; I couldn't tell if it was the clouds moving or the sun's angle changing.

Light filtering through the blinds shone on the metal clasp of the folder, causing the clasp to flip over.

Chen Wei waited a few seconds to make sure Lin Che had no further questions before continuing.

"The third stroke."

Chen Wei turned to the third page.

"September 1, 2022, 152 million."

Global Vector Fund is registered in Luxembourg.

The way this page is drawn is different from the previous two pages.

The first two pages trace back from bottom to top, with a box for each layer, and the images become increasingly blurry as you go up.

The third page is drawn from left to right, with three squares side by side connected by a dotted line.

"I don't have direct channels with Luxembourg."

Chen Wei said this in a very flat tone.

"I asked a friend to help me transfer the case; he does European compliance consulting and is based in Brussels."

"Luxembourg's fund registration information is somewhat more transparent than that of the BVI and Samoa, but it is still limited."

"He obtained a summary of Global Vector's fund structure filing."

"There are seven names on the list of qualified investors."

He paused for a moment and lightly tapped the paper a few times with the tip of his pen.

"Of the seven names, three are other funds, two are family offices, and one is a trust."

"The last one is a natural person."

"The images of natural persons have been blurred out."

"But a code was marked in the fund structure filing."

Chen Wei slid his finger from the third page back to the first page and tapped a string of small words next to the box next to Whitecap.

"It shares the same intermediary number as this one."

Lin Che's gaze followed his finger.

The first transaction was from the British Virgin Islands, and the third from Luxembourg—two seemingly unrelated sources of revenue.

One is in the Caribbean, the other in Western Europe; their registered locations are halfway around the world apart.

But when tracing back to the third level, the two lines collided with the same middleman.

This is no coincidence.

Coincidences are unlikely to be so precise as to match the serial numbers.

The office was silent for two or three seconds.

The air conditioner's vents were blowing towards the ceiling, causing one of the ceiling panels to vibrate slightly.

"The fourth stroke."

Chen Wei turned to the last page.

"On December 22, 2022, approximately 12 million."

Southern Crest Capital is registered in Seychelles.

The diagram on the last page is the simplest, with only two layers, two boxes, and one line.

"Seychelles is one of the most lenient offshore jurisdictions, with virtually no disclosure requirements."

"But this one is actually the easiest to recover."

"The shell company in Seychelles and the first BVI Whitecap were registered through the same intermediary."

"The registration dates were only three days apart."

"The same person, the same intermediary, registered two shell companies one after the other, located in two different offshore jurisdictions."

"The fourth stroke is the roughest, or rather, the most rushed, of the four."

"Registering shell companies separately with a three-day interval is too short; normally, there should be at least a six-month interval."

He laid the four pages of diagrams side by side on the table.

The desktop wasn't big enough, so the corner of the fourth page was resting on the keyboard.

Four red dots, four trace paths, four different entry entities.

The four places of registration are BVI, Samoa, Luxembourg and Seychelles, located on three continents.

However, the first and third strokes intersect on the third layer.

The first and fourth entries intersect at the registration layer.

The four sums of money did not come from four different sources.

These are four entrances to the same network.

Chen Wei didn't make a summary; he doesn't do that kind of thing.

Four pages of paper lay spread out on the table, their lines and squares filling the space in front of Lin Che.

He simply spread out the four pages and let Lin Che read them himself.

There was nothing on the table except for these four pages of paper and that glass of cold water.

The computer screen went dark and entered standby mode; the three icons were no longer visible.

Then Chen Wei's finger moved back to the third page.

Slide the three boxes side by side on the left to the right until you reach the top of the third box.

There is another box above the third box.

It was smaller than the other boxes and was drawn at the top of the diagram, with the border made of red pen.

The box contains the name of an entity.

His finger hovered over the box, but he didn't read it aloud.

Chen Wei raised his head and glanced at Lin Che.