Scammed of more than 13 million! This A-share company involved in blockchain was defeated by telecommunications fraud

Source: Daily Economic News

Editor of Every Economic News: Zhou Yuxiang and Zhao Yun

It is not uncommon for individuals to encounter telecommunications fraud. However, the one who encountered the telecommunications fraud this time was an A-share listed company - which had been involved in blockchain.

Data map, the picture and text are unrelated (Source: Photo Network)

A company involved in blockchain was defeated by telecom fraud

On the evening of November 5, Slake (300382.SZ) issued an announcement stating that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Slake International Limited, had recently been the victim of telecommunications fraud by a criminal gang, resulting in more than US$2.05 million in Slake International's bank account being defrauded through the Internet.

Calculated based on the current exchange rate, the amount defrauded is equivalent to approximately RMB 13.55 million.

Slack said in the announcement that the company had reported the case to the public security authorities after the incident. Currently, the public security authorities are actively investigating the case. The company has applied to freeze more than 1.5 million US dollars of the defrauded funds, and the remaining defrauded funds are also being recovered. The final impact is still uncertain .

According to Slake's 2019 annual report, the company's net profit for the whole year of 2019 was 97.4 million yuan. Based on this calculation, the amount of telecommunications fraud this time accounted for nearly 14% of its annual net profit in 2019.

According to the Securities Times, it is worth mentioning that Slake has been active in the blockchain business this year. On September 30, it announced that the company signed the "Ant Blockchain Traceability Platform Service Agreement" with Ant Blockchain Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. on September 30. On November 2, the Slake board of directors reviewed and approved the proposal to invest in the establishment of a wholly-owned subsidiary, Suzhou Yichao Enterprise Management Co., Ltd. (tentative name), with a registered capital of 100 million yuan.

The emergence of blockchain technology was once expected to solve the problem of telecommunications fraud at the source, but no one expected that blockchain companies would be deceived by telecommunications fraud first.

Received a letter of concern from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange for "taking advantage of Tesla's popularity"

According to information, Slake is one of the world's four largest pull-open lid manufacturers and a leading company in my country's can field. It was established in January 2004. The company is a foreign-funded enterprise and is mainly engaged in the research and development, design, production, assembly and debugging of high-speed pull-open lid production equipment and the research and development, processing and manufacturing of related precision molds and spare parts.

However, on February 27 this year, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange sent a letter of concern to Slake, asking whether the company was catering to market hotspots, speculating on the company's stock price and cooperating with the controlling shareholder to reduce its holdings in the company's shares.

On February 26, Slake responded to investors on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Interactive Platform that the company is currently intensively debugging the automatic production line for battery shells for Tesla's cylindrical battery 21700. After the successful debugging of the production line, it will officially provide Tesla and mainstream cylindrical battery manufacturers at home and abroad with mass production automatic line manufacturing solutions.

After three consecutive days of gains, on the evening of March 1, Slake responded to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's letter of concern, saying that the company has not yet established a formal cooperative relationship with Tesla. As the company's current automatic line for mass production of battery shells is still in the debugging stage, there is still uncertainty as to whether it can be successfully launched on the market; even if it is successfully launched on the market, it is expected to contribute less to the company's performance in 2020, and there is also a risk of intensified domestic market competition in the future.

The third telecommunications fraud case involving a listed company this year

Slack is not the first listed company to be victim of telecommunications fraud this year.

On June 23 this year, Beijing Capital Development, a Shanghai-listed company, announced that its subsidiary Beijing Capital Yintai Real Estate Co., Ltd., in which it holds a 50% stake and is operated by a partner, reported that its financial personnel suffered a telecommunications fraud by a criminal gang, resulting in RMB 26.7 million in Yintai Real Estate's bank account being defrauded through the Internet on June 22, 2020.

Going back further, on June 16 this year, the listed company Shilong Industrial also issued an announcement stating that the company's financial manager was a victim of telecommunications fraud, resulting in 2.98 million yuan in the company's bank account being stolen through the Internet .

According to Cailianshe, professionals analyzed that there may be three reasons why listed companies are defrauded in domestic business or international trade:

The first is that the company's business transaction structure is complex, contracts are not standardized, and business and finance cannot be integrated, resulting in the inability of back-end accounting personnel to identify and judge the risk of fund payment, resulting in the failure of internal control;

The second is that the internal control itself is not sound and has not been updated or upgraded in a timely manner;

The third is that internal control is not consistent and the fund management process is arbitrary. More importantly, from the perspective of corporate governance structure, there are major flaws in authorization, communication, supervision, payment and other links.

Regarding how listed companies can prevent telecommunications fraud, the person believes that this is not only a problem for accounting personnel, but more importantly a problem for business personnel. The board of directors should use relevant regulations to establish and improve financial systems and risk control systems, especially to strengthen financial team building.

Editor | Zhou Yuxiang Zhao Yun Wang Jiaqi

Proofreading | Lu Xiangyong