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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.
Reuters has published a fun story as we speak on the Trump household’s ever-expanding crypto empire. Right here’s one part that caught our eye:
On June 26, an obscure entity known as Aqua1 Basis, which stated it was based mostly within the United Arab Emirates, introduced it was shopping for $100 million of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty. It was the one largest identified buy of the so-called WLFI tokens on the time.
The Chinese language businessman who met with Eric Trump in Dubai was Guren “Bobby” Zhou, who has govt roles in a number of companies and who’s beneath investigation in Britain for cash laundering, based on that nation’s Nationwide Crime Company and a doc filed in an immigration case at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.
A bunch known as Aqua Labs Funding LLC informed Reuters the $100mn buy “was a industrial resolution according to its deal with advancing regulated, scalable digital-asset ecosystems”. It added:
Mr Guren (“Bobby”) Zhou has by no means been convicted of any monetary crime in any jurisdiction, and any implication on the contrary is defamatory and false.
FT Alphaville was naturally keen to seek out out extra. Our tumble down this specific rabbit gap ended with an surprising thud on some hardwood flooring.
Corporations Home exhibits a Mr Guren Zhou labored as a director at a minimum of 13 overlapping UK flooring firms — together with Iwood Flooring, Glamorous Spirit, Stile Interiors, Underlay Republic and Flooring Republic — between Southampton, Preston and London from 2008 to 2019.
All the UK entities listed have since been dissolved. Anbo Industrial, Anbo UK, Anbo Investments, Anbo Stile and Anbo Worldwide, the place Zhou additionally moonlighted, have been among the many final to vanish.
Anbo’s web site stays up and operating, nevertheless. It describes how the group was based by “properly revered timber producer” Zhou Senior in Shanghai in 1989. Exports to the US started in 1991. Bobby Zhou finally took over and introduced the corporate with him to the UK in round 2005.
In 2017, Anbo snapped up Leeds-based on-line retailer Posh Flooring, securing a foothold within the north of England’s laminate market. A information report on the time stated the merger would concurrently “assist the growth of Posh Flooring into Dubai and the UAE”.
Ambiguous market forces upended Anbo’s enterprise mannequin later the identical yr. From an administrator’s report in 2018:
In 2017 the inside design and building industries modified such that administration might now not predict demand for the merchandise . . .
Between January and November 2017 the Firm [Anbo International] averaged gross sales of roughly £523k monthly. Within the latter interval, December 2017 to March 2018, common gross sales have been roughly £94k monthly
In response to the web site, listed here are some issues that subsequently occurred at Anbo:
On this context, Zhou’s $100mn WLFI funding looks like a fairly pure growth.
Additional flooring:
— How an alleged ex-gang member is tied to royal carpet maker Victoria
