Chapter 51 Mediterranean Shipping

Samara Region, Togliatti, Volga Automobile Plant. After receiving the order form from the Mediterranean Trading Company, the manager of the sales company almost jumped on the table happily.

Comrade Manager never imagined that the number of Lada Vani ordered by the Mediterranean Trading Company in the next quarter would be as high as 10,000. This is almost the entire output of the Volga Automobile Plant last year.

In fact, the Mediterranean Trading Company did not expect that the sales of Lada Vani in Latin America would be so good. After all, Latin America has been dominated by American cars all year round. Only in recent years have automakers from Europe and Japan come here to open up the market.

But Radha Wani's success cannot be entirely attributed to luck and drug lords. First of all, the poor road conditions in Latin America have won many markets for Lada Vani, who has excellent off-road capabilities. In addition, he is the only car in the same class equipped with an air-conditioning system. The maintenance and maintenance costs are extremely low, and the leather is durable. As for the only downside, fuel consumption, it doesn't seem to pose any problem in countries like Colombia and Venezuela.

Lada Vani was originally a national car in the Soviet Union, so it still has a certain price advantage in countries with low incomes in Latin America. Seryozha now wants to use the car loan to absorb the funds of the Medellin Group and the Cali Group locally, minimizing unnecessary unnecessary links. With the help of Yuri, these drug lords successively established a series of automobile trading companies in the Cayman Islands to conduct trade with Mediterranean trading companies.

When the cars were delivered to Colombia, they were in principle the property of a company in the Cayman Islands near Jamaica and had nothing to do with local drug lords. However, all Lada sellers are obliged to use Columbia Bank's car loan service. All of a sudden, the car loan business of Bank of Colombia began to flourish, and branches were opened in Venezuela, Central American countries, and Mexico.

It now appears that the drug lords in Colombia have done most of the money laundering. But they are not dissatisfied, because only Mediterranean Trading Company and Columbia Bank can help them handle such a large amount of funds in the world, and only they can make these drug lords with their heads on their waistbands feel at ease to hand over the money. go out.

Due to the location of the Columbia Bank, the development has always been limited. Now with the help of the car loan business, it has become the largest car consumer bank in the Caribbean, thanks to those drug lords. But just last month, this humble bank provided William Hill, a famous European gaming company, with a loan of 500 million US dollars to help it acquire the famous hotel in New York, the Plaza Hotel. sparked intense discussions among colleagues. Five hundred million U.S. dollars is not a small amount, and this loan is even larger than the foreign exchange reserves of some countries in Central America. Everyone is also talking about who is the financial backer behind the Columbia Bank?

Now that Columbia Bank has been privatized, Columbia Bank does not have to provide anyone with its property and financial status unless it is involved in a crime.

Seryozha retained the old management of the bank and only strengthened its auto loan business. He wasn't concerned that the company's management found out that Columbia Bank was being used to launder money, since the car loan income and disbursements were real transactions.

The acquisition of the Plaza Hotel made William Hill famous, because this is not just a hotel, it has become a historical witness of New York. The Hilton family would not have sold the hotel if it hadn't been to finance their purchase of the more famous Waldorf Astoria. In order to ensure that there will be no problems with the service quality of this hotel, Yuri spent a lot of money to keep the original staff of this hotel, ranging from the management of the hotel to the doormen and waiters of the hotel. to retain. Yuri does not intend to integrate this hotel into the Ibis hotel chain he owns, but intends to let him operate it alone.

However, Yuri has already greeted the management staff of the hotel. He must be informed if any important guests will be staying at the Plaza Hotel. The employees naturally had no objection to the new boss's request. They didn't know that the acquisition of the hotel for 500 million yuan was actually just to get news of the signing of the "Plaza Accord" in advance.

Due to the sudden increase in car orders, Boris, who temporarily replaced Mikhail in charge of the Mediterranean Trading Company during this period, asked Seryosha whether to set up his own transport fleet, because he got a message from Yakov that Italy There is a shipping company in the hands of the mafia that is about to fail due to the economic downturn, and now they want to sell it, but this shipping company used to be used for money laundering, so there are too many secrets that cannot be revealed, and the mafia can't find anyone to take over. people. If Seryozha wanted to buy flowers, it would not cost much in total.

Seryozha had asked Tonya some time ago whether there were bankrupt shipping companies for sale. However, no suitable one has been found, some because the main business is not in Europe, and some because the scale is too small. Now that he has been notified by Boris, Seryozha naturally wants to seize the opportunity. The size of this shipping company is not too big, and its headquarters is in Naples, which just meets the requirements of Seryozha.

So Tonya soon left Switzerland for Naples to investigate the shipping company. Since the other party was the Mafia, Sergesha was afraid that they would use tricks to conceal their assets, so he entrusted Mark Rich to invite several reliable accountants from Switzerland to help Tonya evaluate the assets of Mediterranean Shipping Company. These accountants were really good. The cars on the pier and the ships in the port drove past them one by one. It was soon discovered that these mafias had overstated the fixed assets of the shipping companies and understated the number of vehicles and ships.

Yakov severely warned these dishonest guys, and discounted the already cheap purchase price. The shipping company with 40 large cargo ships was successfully acquired with 2.1 billion US dollars.

Now Tonya finally has a large enterprise in her hands, and it is also the most important transportation industry for the Gorky Brotherhood. That night, Tonya discussed excitedly with Seryozha on the phone for a long time. It also intends to integrate the current air cargo business into it.

The original business of MSC was mainly the transportation of goods from the Mediterranean coast to Africa. Not only did it suffer serious losses, but it also had some debt problems. During the oil crisis in 1979, the company ordered several large tankers at once because of the sharp rise in oil prices, but now it intends to break the contract due to the lack of shipping and does not want to pay the shipyard. However, with Serezha's Soviet foreign trade orders, it will be difficult for this shipping company to lose money in the future. Sergesha happily bought these tankers and continued to build them, and at the same time placed an order for a new cargo ship with a larger tonnage.