The Genuine Top G Alexander Davis

007 - A Clean Financial Report

He finds it hard to hold it. So he heads straight to the kindergarten where his daughter should be at these hours. However, he is aware that he can't forcefully meet with Elly at the moment.

  

Instead, he decides to wait at a coffee shop across the road, hoping for an opportunity to encounter Sofia when she comes to pick up their daughter.

  

Until at some point, he gets a phone call from Harry Gaines.

  

[Where are you?]

  

“In a coffee shop.”

  

[A lunch break? I heard you were taking your leave to get back home]

  

“Yeah, I'm done!”

  

[Hey, you asked me $150K for a day, so I expect you to take your job seriously]

  

“Rest assured! Like I said, I'm done. So you don’t need to pay me for tomorrow. I'll give my assessment later.”

  

Alex immediately turns off the call and heads back home with a tired face. Yes, he is back home, not to Boris’ apartment.

  

Just because Sofia has kicked him out of her family, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything. Even before marrying Sofia, he already had a house in a quiet neighborhood.

  

From outside, it just looks like an old abandoned small house. But the inside is so neat and clean, with so much vintage furniture with the brand of Vintage Vega on them.

  

He hasn’t used this house for 10 years. But he always hired someone to clean the house once a month.

  

But there’s one basement which hasn’t been entered by anyone else. Inside it, there are so many weapons neatly arranged in one wall, and some scraps of old magazines and newspapers hung on another wall.

  

“I hope they still keep the research active over there,” mumbles Alex as he turns on his computer.

  

Actually, during his time as a CEO for Vintage Vega, Inc., he has set up a department in that company specifically for research. This department collects data and statistics about the market trend in all aspects. Even for things which seem to have nothing to do with the business that company did.

  

All that data and statistics are stored in one server at Vintage Vega’s main office. And Alex had actually connected that server to his personal computer in this basement so he can access them while working at home.

  

“Great! I still can access it.”

  

At least until midnight, he stays in this room, observing some market statistics in the last five years, surfing the internet, and then calling some people asking for some information he needs.

  

The next day, he visits EightG main office again with his shady and scrappy looks. It can’t be helped, because he hasn’t had that much time to do the laundry since coming back from his previous business trip. He is almost like a veteran detective who has been trying to solve a 50-years-old case.

  

Unlike yesterday, he comes by carrying a backpack. Luckily for him, he doesn’t encounter anyone in the elevator. At least until he reaches the 7th floor, one fat man with barren head enters.

  

Finding Alex with his unneat attire, the fat man stares with an unpleasant gaze, examining him from top to toe.

  

“What the hell is wrong with you? You come to office with this? Can't your wife serve at home well?”

  

Alex’s eyebrows are twitched, not hiding how annoyed he is by the fatman’s harsh words. Yet the fatman keeps continuing with his arrogant gesture.

  

“We have an established working ethic here, and I expect you to respect that! Are you new here?”

  

“Sorry! I’m not an amployee,” replies Alex curtly.

  

“Oh! Then, what business you have here?” asks the fatman.

  

“Sorry! Can’t tell you!”

  

“What the? Look, I’m the vice president here, and I have the right to question an outsider like you!”

  

Oddly, it attracts Alex’s curiousity. He squits his eyes a bit, looking at the fat man like he has some interest in him.

  

But then…

  

Ting!

  

The elevator door opens, and the fatman realizes they are already at the top floor, a place where only the top executives work.

  

“I think I’ll have a business with you later. But I can't tell you what business I have now,” says Alex as he leaves him.

  

The fatman keeps looking at Alex walking down the hallway with curious face. Until he sees Alex standing right in front of the president’s office, he finds him looking back by showing a cold smile. Immediately, the fatman’s face looks so awry by something.

  

As Alex enters Harry's office, Harry welcomes him with all the stack of the financial reports on the table. There’s also Julia there.

  

“You look so uninspired. Why is that?” asks Harry as a greeting.

  

“If I knew I would finish it this fast, I would have charged more,” replies Alex.

  

“So, what did you find?”

  

“All those financial reports are clean, especially for the last five years. If I want to trick the tax officers, I would do it this way.”

  

“What was that?” argues Harry, immediately getting up by slamming the table. “Are you accusing me of faking the financial report to trick the tax payment?”

  

“If it’s not to trick them, then these reports were meant to trick you,” utters Alex by averting his gaze to Julia Henderson.

  

Harry also averts his attention to Julia slowly. And immediately, that Chief Financial Officer lady begins attacking Alex’s credibility in making that accusation.

  

“This is bogus! You can’t simply bring a man with no educational background, let him take a look at the financial report for 7 years in just a few hours, and then start making this accusation.”

  

She rushes to pick the financial reports, and then takes them closer to Alex, challenging Alex to bring the proof.

  

“You’ve taken this too far!” she grumbles. “If you can’t defend your statement, I’ll sue you for your intention to defame me and my credibility in working for this company.”

  

But Alex doesn’t even touch the report. He simply mentions so much data related to the company's expenses during those five years.

  

He doesn’t mention everything, only the numbers that have irregularities which are scattered each month with a similar pattern. Specifically on the costs of procuring raw materials for production and packaging.

  

He even lets Julia recheck each number that he mentions. Indeed, he manages to recall all that data accurately. And based on the way Alex chooses his data specifically by ignoring the others, Julia begins to realize the things she didn’t realize before this.

  

“One example, the cost of procurement of wheat flour. It's swelled too much compared to the previous year's report before this company began the expansion. I know this report only includes total monthly expenses. And I quite understand that you did increase the production in the last five years. But if you recalculate the base cost, the figure goes up too much. That’s just from one item,” explains Alex.

  

“Surely the cost went up. Do you think the price of goods would remain the same throughout the year?” argues Julia. “This just shows how ignorant you are. I bet this must be the reason Vintage Vega no longer uses your service.”

  

“I understand the problem of inflation, and also about fluctuations in the price of goods,” utters Alex. “But I expected the number would fluctuate too. But no, the numbers didn't fluctuate. It’s steadily increased in an odd way. And the weirdest thing is, it has almost a similar pattern with the other items. Need me to call each of them to make sure about the price of these items when you bought them?”

  

“Of, of course!” replies Julia in a bit of an unsure face. “If you really think we deliberately increased the number in these reports, that’s the only way you can prove it.”

  

Alex takes out a file of documents, and hands it over to Harry Gaines. As Harry examines the file page by page, he realizes it is a collection of data about the prices of several goods and commodities that are generally used by Harry’s company in its production activities.

  

The data is quite detailed, starting from five years ago, which recorded the price of these commodities each month.

  

Alex then pushes the financial report closer to Julia, as if he wants to challenge her to follow his evaluation herself.