Chapter 168 : Collapse-Style Corruption
Chapter 168: Collapse-Style Corruption
He felt annoyed the more he thought about it. He did not know how long he could keep opposing it, and every act of opposition only deepened the dissatisfaction other leaders had toward him. If this continued, he figured his career would probably end there.
He told his secretary to prepare the car and planned to go down to the countryside for a walk. Doing some propaganda work could also help him calm his mind.
When the car was halfway there, he casually turned his head and noticed that two more cars were following behind. He asked the secretary who was driving, “Why are there cars following us?”
‘Hey, leader, everyone has to file a report to request a vehicle when they go out. They write down what they’re going to do. Those are guards assigned to you to ensure your safety.’
Thatcher’s gaze became deep. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly asked, “Is there a way to shake them off?”
‘This… it should be possible, but you might need to get out of the car later.’
“Alright, do it the way you said.”
The secretary wanted to ask why he was doing this, but after thinking it over, he felt that it was better not to ask what he should not. He gave a firm reply directly.
The secretaries assigned to each leader were all retired from the military. Besides being highly skilled, they also possessed many professional abilities, and most importantly, they were extremely tight-lipped.
After receiving the order, the secretary began his operation, turning left and right within the city.
He felt that being able to shake them off depended not only on confidence in his own driving skills, but more importantly on the car itself.
Every leader’s official vehicle, beneath its plain exterior, was a thoroughbred beast of performance. Its low profile existed purely to increase its deceptive nature.
Relying on this performance advantage, the secretary quickly drove the car to a secluded spot and pulled Thatcher out. They wandered through crooked, winding alleys. By the time the guards discovered the car, the two had already boarded a bus heading for the countryside.
Moreover, under Thatcher’s instructions, the two even headed in the opposite direction of the original plan, leaving absolutely no chance for pursuit.
Thatcher felt that since arriving in Ankargas State, he had been acting a bit too by-the-book, feeling constrained at every turn. Since that was the case, he might as well act on impulse for once, change his approach, and conduct a discreet inspection.
He soon picked a village and got off the bus. The two of them stumbled their way into the village, stepping deep and shallow along the path.
In the past, rural areas were very exclusionary, but because Ankargas was being rebuilt from the ground up, a large number of construction teams and migrant populations seeking opportunities had moved in. After seeing so many outsiders, the locals had become immune to it.
When faced with these two strangers, they merely glanced at them, asked a couple of questions, and that was it.
In order to do his job well, Thatcher had spent quite some effort learning the local dialect, enough to manage a few halting sentences.
He knocked on the door of one household that looked relatively simple.
He did not state his specific position, only saying that he had come to the village to see whether the policies posted at the village entrance had been properly implemented.
This was work handled by clerical officers, who conducted spot checks across the Alliance from time to time. The villagers had seen this often enough that it was nothing unusual. They might not know much else, but they did know that whenever such people came, their village would usually receive some benefits. So they smiled and welcomed the two inside.
Sitting in the villager’s house, seeing the stove burning by the wall, Thatcher’s face lifted with a faint smile, and he casually asked, “Is the coal working well for you?”
The woman who was adding coal replied offhandedly: ‘The coal’s good, it burns for quite a long time. It’s just that if you use too much, it gets a bit expensive. Firewood is cheaper.’
There was no particular emotion in her tone, just the normal shrewdness of a rural woman. They always had ways to make their small lives more comfortable.
Thatcher did not react at first, but he quickly caught the key point and asked in confusion, “A bit expensive? Didn’t the government issue vouchers with no charge? Or is the monthly quota not enough to burn?”
The woman looked somewhat puzzled at her husband, who was sitting nearby smoking. There was some confusion on the man’s face: ‘Since when has anything under heaven been free~ The people at the coal yard said the government notice saying it’s free means they waived the extra fees and only charge the cost price. We take the voucher and buy an extra slip to get the coal. The price isn’t very high.’
‘It’s just that we don’t have much money on hand. Grain, oil, cotton, and salt all cost money. Coal, we can only buy less.’
The function of vouchers was not only to exchange for supplies. The vouchers recovered themselves held value. They were used to reconcile accounts with the central authorities. However many vouchers there were, that much subsidy would be issued.
In other words, someone was exploiting a misinterpretation of policy to collect money twice.
Doing this was not simple. The Alliance was not foolish. The authenticity of vouchers had to be verified, and voucher usage had to be checked against material inflows and outflows.
On top of that, the police department and the procuratorate under the central authority were four powers operating independently and not subordinate to one another.
The courts required materials to be submitted, or major cases, to initiate their procedures. Ordinary small and mid-level cases were handled by local branches themselves.
At that point, Thatcher thought of why it was necessary to let external enterprises enter.
If the joint-venture process was launched, before tax authorities on both sides connected, they would definitely have to recheck remaining assets, strip out valueless assets, and make a final assessment of past losses. Then the original factory owners would be compensated with money or shares in the new factory.
How were losses assessed? The workshops and machines had all been torn apart! Without concrete assets, there was plenty of room to talk.
Ill-gotten money always needed to be laundered out through different legitimate channels to bypass taxation.
Bypassing taxes was not something you could just talk about casually. The Empress kept an extremely tight watch on this. The tax department’s job security was firmer than any other position in the entire Alliance, not to mention monetary rewards.
Food, clothing, housing, transportation, medical care, and education were all provided at the highest level. For relatives, there were even dedicated police offices responsible for protection, completely eliminating any worries, allowing them to handle their work without pressure.
At the same time, in the enterprises and departments they interfaced with, there was also a percentage-based tax commission system. This bonus income commonly reached ten to even a hundred times the tax base salary.
As a result, taxation was the hottest professional field within the Alliance. Once admitted, it was equivalent to skipping all levels and instantly becoming a top-salary professional in the Alliance.
And the punishments for them were also the harshest. If the tax inspection department discovered tax evasion or underreporting in an enterprise, both the enterprise and the tax officials would face severe penalties. Fines were also percentage-based, absolutely enough to make the responsible enterprise heads and tax officials lie in bed at night and cry.
Bypassing taxes to cook the books and launder money—you weren’t laundering money, you were laundering the tax authority’s life!
So under these circumstances, how could they still be bought off?
Thatcher thought for a moment. If enterprises had not yet officially entered on a large scale, then the tax authority’s manpower in Ankargas State was actually not very large. Unlike the old states where enterprises and tax authorities were deeply entangled and impossible to sort out, it was hard to achieve partial corruption.
But with just a few people, corruption was still possible, especially if problems had already arisen at the top~