Chapter 339. Closing the Net

Chapter 339. Closing the Net
Preston’s largest customers soon became unhappy. Several shipments of minerals failed to arrive on time, forcing the factories to look for other sources of supply so their production would not be interrupted. A number of companies that had worked with Preston for many years also began questioning whether Preston was still capable of transporting their goods properly and delivering everything on time.

At that exact moment, Galvin sent his people to approach those business partners.

Wyndham Group did not directly try to take Preston Group’s contracts. Instead, Galvin used a third company to offer them another source of goods at a slightly lower price, while also giving them a firm promise that every shipment would arrive on time.

Those partners were already angry with Preston, so they immediately began to waver. In only ten days, Preston lost three major contracts. The amount of money they lost was still not enough to bring the whole family down, but it was enough to make the market begin to question them.

Andrea quickly realized that Galvin and Kevin had started taking revenge on him. But Andrea could not find any proof that Wyndham and Thorne were the ones standing behind everything that was happening.

All he could do was keep using money to fill one hole after another. Yet every time he had just finished dealing with one problem, another problem appeared somewhere else. At the same time, Galvin quietly sent documents showing that Andrea had been the one behind the destruction of the Miller company to several minor shareholders. The documents contained complete records of the money transfers, audio recordings, and statements from the middlemen who had taken part in it.

Those shareholders had always believed that Preston’s profits were clean and had come from normal business. But when they saw that the family had used one company after another to manipulate the prices of goods, bribe business partners, and force another company into bankruptcy, they immediately became worried.

It was not because they were people who cared about justice or wanted to stand on the right side. They were worried because once those actions became public, the share prices of Preston’s companies would fall sharply, and their own interests would suffer a heavy blow.

Several shareholders wanted to sell the shares they were holding. Galvin’s people quietly bought those shares through a number of different accounts, making sure that no single account drew too much attention. Kevin also used funds belonging to the Thorne family to buy up shares in two transportation companies owned by Preston.

They did not need to gain control of those companies. They only needed to hold enough shares to attend shareholder meetings and gain access to internal documents that outsiders would never be allowed to see.

After Galvin’s people became shareholders in Preston’s companies, the financial reports that had been hidden away slowly began to appear. For many years, Preston had used false profits to raise the value of its companies. Because of that, some investments had been recorded at values much higher than what they were actually worth, while the debts belonging to several subsidiary companies had been moved somewhere else so they would not appear in the proper accounts.

Without someone on the inside looking into those records, it would have been extremely difficult to notice anything wrong with the figures. The reports had been arranged carefully enough to fool ordinary investors and anyone who only looked at the surface. But now, every report was copied and quietly delivered into Galvin’s hands.

Even so, Galvin did not make any of them public right away. He wanted to wait. He wanted Preston to keep struggling, keep moving money around, and trap itself even more deeply before he finally released the evidence.

Andrea knew very well that the situation was getting worse, so he began selling off some of his assets overseas. He needed cash to keep the stock price from falling and to repay the debts that were suddenly being called in before their due dates. But most of the buyers who appeared before Andrea had actually been arranged by Galvin and Kevin.

They deliberately offered extremely low prices, leaving Andrea with no choice but to sell those assets at a loss.

At the same time, Galvin and Kevin continued putting pressure on Preston’s businesses. One of Preston’s real estate projects overseas was suddenly placed under investigation over its construction permits, while workers at a mineral mine went on strike because their wages had been delayed.

The insurance company responsible for Preston’s cargo ships also announced that it needed to review the level of risk after a series of delivery problems. As a result, the insurance premiums rose almost immediately.

With every day that passed, the Preston family lost another large amount of money.

Andrea slowly began to lose his calm. He called the people he had known and dealt with in the past, trying to use those old connections to pressure the banks into continuing to provide him with funds.

But Galvin had already moved one step ahead of him. Evidence connected to Preston’s shell companies was sent privately to the risk control department of every bank involved. No one wanted to continue lending more money to a family that could come under investigation at any moment.

Some of the people who had once accepted benefits from Preston also began avoiding Andrea. In business, people were willing to stand beside someone powerful, but very few were willing to sink together with a ship whose bottom had already been torn open.

Andrea could no longer obtain money from outside, so his only choice was to pull funds out of projects that were still operating. This caused the subsidiary companies to start running short of money for wages and for purchasing goods. Suppliers who had once been patient also changed their attitude and began demanding payment in advance before they would send anything.

The more desperately Preston needed money, the less willing the market became to let them buy on credit. It had turned into a vicious circle with no way out.

In less than a month, the value of the Preston family’s two listed companies had fallen by more than half. Only then did Galvin allow part of the information his people had dug out from inside Preston to be made public.

A financial newspaper published an investigative article about the connection between Preston and the bankruptcy of the Miller company. Soon afterward, other documents began appearing one after another. False financial reports, money transfers with no clear purpose, and purchase contracts signed with companies that had no real business operations were all laid out before the public.

The news spread very quickly, and the shareholders panicked and began selling their shares. Andrea planned to use money to buy those shares back in order to keep the price from falling, but too many people were selling at once. The head office was also running out of cash, so Andrea could do nothing except stand by helplessly and watch wave after wave of Preston shares pour onto the market.