Where did the money go?

About 14 years ago, our company went through privatization. The new owner promised us the moon and the stars—which is usually how these things go, right? Then, after a few years, he went out and took out several massive mortgage loans, putting the very land our factory sits on up as collateral. The money was ALLEGEDLY intended to fuel the day-to-day operations of our firm, which employs about 120 people.
But if you look at our "normal" operations, you won't see a single cent of that impact. The owner pulled in roughly $7 million in loans, yet I’d be surprised if even a million actually made it into this company. We ended up with a couple of pieces of used machinery, nothing more.
Then the recession hit, and somehow, we managed to weather the storm. For the last few years, work has been plentiful—we have plenty of orders coming in—but the real issue is that nobody has invested a dime back into the business. Not in the equipment, not in the staff... nothing. And we all know those massive loans were drawn down in a few big chunks. Now, the owners are trying to play smart, claiming everything was spent on running the business, which is total nonsense because the company hasn't touched a penny of borrowed money in five years. Granted, we are struggling, but...
The struggle isn't caused by a lack of work; it's caused by a complete refusal to reinvest.
The employee council receives certain financial reports, but they are utterly useless when it comes to tracing where that loan money actually went. Honestly, it feels like those reports are written in a language only a specialized CPA could decipher—not some engineer who doesn't deal with high-level finance in his daily life.
Now, word is getting around that the money never even landed in our company's account. Instead, it was allegedly diverted to a sister company to be invested abroad, where the owner holds several other businesses.
Those of us on the union side and the employee council just want to know one thing: how do we find out what happened to that loan money? Because the second anyone brings up a raise or better working conditions, the owner immediately starts whining about how much money he spent and how we all need to chip in to pay off his debts.
So, how do we uncover the TRUTH? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like we're being forced to tighten our belts just so someone else can fund a private hotel in Moscow.

We need this information to give us leverage during negotiations. We need to walk into that room with hard facts, rather than letting them treat us like idiots.

The owner isn't going to hand over this info—or if he does, it'll be scrubbed clean so nothing is visible. And the bank that issued the loans? They'll just hide behind "proprietary business secrets." There's a strong suspicion that the cash never even hit the books of the company providing the collateral, but was instead snatched up by an overseas parent company.
And apparently, that shell company only has about ten employees.

Is there any way for the employee council or the union to get answers from the IRS? The FBI? The GAO?

It’s strange... I noticed something remarkably similar out in the Rust Belt while I was digging through some property records. You have these companies—some are currently in bankruptcy proceedings, others are still operating just fine—that have managed to saddle their own real estate holdings with these absurdly high liabilities, despite having barely injected any actual capital into the business itself. I saw the exact same pattern popping up with several major banks as well.

Benjamin Taylor6 said:About 14 years ago, our company went through privatization. The new owner promised us the moon and the stars—which is usually how these things go, right? Then, after a few years, he went out and took out several massive mortgage loans, putting the very land our factory sits on up as collateral. The money was ALLEGEDLY intended to fuel the day-to-day operations of our firm, which employs about 120 people.
But if you look at our "normal" operations, you won't see a single cent of that impact. The owner pulled in roughly $7 million in loans, yet I’d be surprised if even a million actually made it into this company. We ended up with a couple of pieces of used machinery, nothing more.
Then the recession hit, and somehow, we managed to weather the storm. For the last few years, work has been plentiful—we have plenty of orders coming in—but the real issue is that nobody has invested a dime back into the business. Not in the equipment, not in the staff... nothing. And we all know those massive loans were drawn down in a few big chunks. Now, the owners are trying to play smart, claiming everything was spent on running the business, which is total nonsense because the company hasn't touched a penny of borrowed money in five years. Granted, we are struggling, but...
The struggle isn't caused by a lack of work; it's caused by a complete refusal to reinvest.
The employee council receives certain financial reports, but they are utterly useless when it comes to tracing where that loan money actually went. Honestly, it feels like those reports are written in a language only a specialized CPA could decipher—not some engineer who doesn't deal with high-level finance in his daily life.
Now, word is getting around that the money never even landed in our company's account. Instead, it was allegedly diverted to a sister company to be invested abroad, where the owner holds several other businesses.
Those of us on the union side and the employee council just want to know one thing: how do we find out what happened to that loan money? Because the second anyone brings up a raise or better working conditions, the owner immediately starts whining about how much money he spent and how we all need to chip in to pay off his debts.
So, how do we uncover the TRUTH? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like we're being forced to tighten our belts just so someone else can fund a private hotel in Moscow.

We need this information to give us leverage during negotiations. We need to walk into that room with hard facts, rather than letting them treat us like idiots.

The owner isn't going to hand over this info—or if he does, it'll be scrubbed clean so nothing is visible. And the bank that issued the loans? They'll just hide behind "proprietary business secrets." There's a strong suspicion that the cash never even hit the books of the company providing the collateral, but was instead snatched up by an overseas parent company.
And apparently, that shell company only has about ten employees.

Is there any way for the employee council or the union to get answers from the IRS? The FBI? The GAO?

Yeah, you can definitely find out... Like how Deep Throat told Bob Woodward in "All President ` sa Men"? FOLLOW The MONEY🙂

Lawrence Cook said:Yeah, you can definitely find out... Like how Deep Throat told Bob Woodward in "All President ` sa Men"? FOLLOW The MONEY🙂

Someone tried to tail him—or maybe just shadow his every move—so now it looks like he’s about to be kicked right out of the firm. Typical. I was scrolling through some old threads earlier—you know how I get, just falling down those digital rabbit holes at 2 AM—and I stumbled upon this discussion about the legal mess surrounding that massive industrial contract. It’s one of those situations where you can almost smell the corruption from here, even years later. The whole thing centers around the litigation involving sas strojogradnja d.o.o. and their dealings with various contractors. If you look closely at the filings, there’s this glaring inconsistency regarding the oversight provided by the Commercial Court in San Diego. Honestly, it feels like a classic case of "who watches the watchmen?" You have these massive corporate interests playing chess while the regulatory bodies are basically playing checkers—if they aren't outright sleeping on the job. Benjamin Taylor6 was making some points about the transparency of the bidding process, and frankly, I think he’s onto something. There's a certain level of obfuscation that happens when large sums of money start moving between private firms and public entities. It reminds me of that time back in Chicago when my cousin tried to sue a construction firm over a botched renovation; the paperwork alone was enough to make your eyes bleed, let alone the actual legal maneuvering. Then you have the commentary from Rebecca Wood27, who seems to think the entire investigation was a coordinated effort to protect specific stakeholders. While I tend to be a bit more skeptical of grand conspiracies—I prefer to follow the paper trail rather than the rumors—there is an undeniable pattern of behavior here. When you see the same players appearing in every single deposition, you have to wonder if the game is rigged from the jump. It’s just frustrating. We talk so much about accountability in our society, yet when a major entity like this gets caught in a web of questionable contracts, the resolution is often nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a fine that amounts to a rounding error on their quarterly earnings report. It makes you want to scream into the void, doesn't it? Anyway, just my two cents. I'll probably go back to reading something less infuriating now.
😢😲🙂🙂😁

And just like that, everything will continue to proceed strictly according to the letter of the law!!

Rebecca Wood27 said:It’s strange... I noticed something remarkably similar out in the Rust Belt while I was digging through some property records. You have these companies—some are currently in bankruptcy proceedings, others are still operating just fine—that have managed to saddle their own real estate holdings with these absurdly high liabilities, despite having barely injected any actual capital into the business itself. I saw the exact same pattern popping up with several major banks as well.

It seems to me that this rule applies to pretty much every corner of the globe—honestly, God help us all. 😁

If we’re talking millions of dollars, you need to hunt for a connection between the company owner and either the president or a board member of the bank that greenlit the loan—or, if it’s a major institution like JPMorgan Chase, look at the head of corporate banking. That’s your easiest way to dig up the truth.

Otherwise, what you've described is actually pretty standard practice. I'd suggest digging into the parent company's financial statements instead; they'll likely give you a much clearer picture.

Frank Nelson2 said:If we’re talking millions of dollars, you need to hunt for a connection between the company owner and either the president or a board member of the bank that greenlit the loan—or, if it’s a major institution like JPMorgan Chase, look at the head of corporate banking. That’s your easiest way to dig up the truth.

Otherwise, what you've described is actually pretty standard practice. I'd suggest digging into the parent company's financial statements instead; they'll likely give you a much clearer picture.

It’s a total suicide mission—honestly, we're chasing ghosts here. These big banks guard their data like a rattlesnake guards its tail, and frankly, good luck getting a single shred of truth out of them.
And let’s be clear—not one single person among us has any kind of connection to the banks. Not a soul.

Honestly, what you’ve laid out there is pretty standard stuff—nothing out of the ordinary, really. If I were you, I’d dig into the parent company’s financial statements instead. Those reports will actually give you the real story, and they'll tell you a hell of a lot more than whatever surface-level noise you're looking at right now.

As for those financial reports—I did take a look, really I did—but honestly, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me. Not that I’m some kind of Wall Street wizard or a high-priced forensic accountant, mind you; I'm certainly no expert in that field.
On top of all that—and I really mean this—that money didn't even hit the company's actual bank account. Instead, it was funneled straight into some internal mechanism within the cluster itself. And get this: the entire hub for that cluster is based out of Liechtenstein!

We might as well just lock this thread down!!
It’s painfully obvious where all that cash actually ended up: 😲 😂 😲

Does this look fishy to you? :

With the goal of restructuring and splitting the Company into separate business units for privatization, in
December 1999, the machinery division was carved out of the Company. By order
of the Commercial Court in San Diego, case number Tt-99/2348-6 dated December 21, 1999, the entity
sas strojogradnja d.o.o. Zadar was established as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company. Because this machinery unit was spun off,
all the revenue from machine sales on the international market vanished from the main books. Consequently, in 2000, total
revenues amounted to $4735621, which represents a drop of $5336296—or about 53.0%—compared to the
revenue generated back in 1999. Given that the Company sold its entire business
stake in sas strojogradnja d.o.o. for $44083900 to the company rika d.o.o. based in
Minneapolis for 3,000,000 DEM in August 2000,

The fund sold its stake, valued at $44083900, for just 3 million dollars (roughly 11 million local currency) ???!!!
How on earth does someone manage to sell something for twelve times less than its appraised value!!???

For context, during that period, shares of the parent company were worth $1000 but were trading at $333, so even then, they were selling for one third of their value. But here, we are talking about a sale at one-twelfth of the price—that’s three times lower than what the free market would have reasonably offered??

Benjamin Taylor6 said:About 14 years ago, our company went through privatization. The new owner promised us the moon and the stars—which is usually how these things go, right? Then, after a few years, he went out and took out several massive mortgage loans, putting the very land our factory sits on up as collateral. The money was ALLEGEDLY intended to fuel the day-to-day operations of our firm, which employs about 120 people.
But if you look at our "normal" operations, you won't see a single cent of that impact. The owner pulled in roughly $7 million in loans, yet I’d be surprised if even a million actually made it into this company. We ended up with a couple of pieces of used machinery, nothing more.
Then the recession hit, and somehow, we managed to weather the storm. For the last few years, work has been plentiful—we have plenty of orders coming in—but the real issue is that nobody has invested a dime back into the business. Not in the equipment, not in the staff... nothing. And we all know those massive loans were drawn down in a few big chunks. Now, the owners are trying to play smart, claiming everything was spent on running the business, which is total nonsense because the company hasn't touched a penny of borrowed money in five years. Granted, we are struggling, but...
The struggle isn't caused by a lack of work; it's caused by a complete refusal to reinvest.
The employee council receives certain financial reports, but they are utterly useless when it comes to tracing where that loan money actually went. Honestly, it feels like those reports are written in a language only a specialized CPA could decipher—not some engineer who doesn't deal with high-level finance in his daily life.
Now, word is getting around that the money never even landed in our company's account. Instead, it was allegedly diverted to a sister company to be invested abroad, where the owner holds several other businesses.
Those of us on the union side and the employee council just want to know one thing: how do we find out what happened to that loan money? Because the second anyone brings up a raise or better working conditions, the owner immediately starts whining about how much money he spent and how we all need to chip in to pay off his debts.
So, how do we uncover the TRUTH? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like we're being forced to tighten our belts just so someone else can fund a private hotel in Moscow.

We need this information to give us leverage during negotiations. We need to walk into that room with hard facts, rather than letting them treat us like idiots.

The owner isn't going to hand over this info—or if he does, it'll be scrubbed clean so nothing is visible. And the bank that issued the loans? They'll just hide behind "proprietary business secrets." There's a strong suspicion that the cash never even hit the books of the company providing the collateral, but was instead snatched up by an overseas parent company.
And apparently, that shell company only has about ten employees.

Is there any way for the employee council or the union to get answers from the IRS? The FBI? The GAO?

Well, I guess you'd need to get a look at the actual business ledgers—you know, really dig into the books—and then have some kind of expert go over everything to make sense of the numbers. As for how you'd even get your hands on those books in the first place... man, I haven't got a clue.

vividranger8 said:Well, I guess you'd need to get a look at the actual business ledgers—you know, really dig into the books—and then have some kind of expert go over everything to make sense of the numbers. As for how you'd even get your hands on those books in the first place... man, I haven't got a clue.

Maybe through the FBI? Though, I find it hard to believe they’d bother getting their hands dirty with this—even if someone handed them an anonymous (or maybe even signed, who knows) tip regarding white-collar crime and racketeering aimed at draining a corporation dry and driving it straight into the ground.

p.s.

By the way, we aren't talking about a 7 million euro mortgage here; once you convert everything, we’re looking at closer to 9 million euros total.