Recently, the funds in the collection account of Tongtuo, a 10 billion seller, were transferred, which shocked the US FBI.
Tongtuo's parent company announced that it was suspected that Xie Dan, the trustee of Tongtuo, had arbitrarily changed or transferred the collection account of its Sports Station in Wal Mart, which led to the failure of normal collection.Amount involvedUS $2.7861 million (about 17.757 million yuan)。Therefore, Tongtuo filed a lawsuit to the American court, demanding Xie Dan to return all the money.Now, Tongtuo has applied to the court for two temporary freezing orders of TRO and PI, and the FBI of the United States has also been involved in the investigation.The parent company Huading Shares said in the announcement that the outcome of the lawsuit was uncertain,The impact on the current profit or future profit of the Company cannot be determined。As an experienced big seller, Tongtuo still stepped into the pit, which also reminds all sellers that it is necessary to guard against others.In view of Tongtuo's situation, Anne, who is consulted by IGM Yingpairui, fed back to the blue ocean Yiguan website egainnews.com that this situation is special and uncommon."Xie Dan is Tongtuo's' client ', and we need to pay attention here,'Principal' and 'Agent'There is a difference. "Anne said that the agent, usually a company, needs someone in the local area to help with tax number issues, product compliance issues, etc. when conducting transnational trade.Under normal circumstances, the agent only"Local affairs representative of the company", do not have too much decision-making power. The company is still a Chinese company, and the capital account is still the company's account. It is impossible for the agent to misappropriate funds beyond the company.The "Client" is different. According to Tongtuo's announcement, Tongtuo should entrust Xie Dan to open a public account in the United States and collect money through the public account. Xie Dan's status in the United States is likely to be the legal representative or shareholder of Tongtuo America.At present, it is difficult for non American citizens to open American companies and public accounts. In comparison, it would be much easier to have an "American" partner and bypass relevant policies.Therefore, if many companies want to open a company in the United States,You need a "partner" with a registered residence registration in the United States."This kind of 'principal' has great authority, because she is a shareholder or legal representative of the company, so she has the authority to transfer funds. This is an authority that ordinary agents cannot have."Therefore, Anne believes that,At present, small and medium-sized sellers need not be too nervous,As long as it's not"Entrusted company" and "Entrusted company account"In general, there will be no "transfer" of funds like Tongtuo.The reason why Tongtuo will use this "client" model is probably related to Wal Mart's policies.At present, Wal Mart has very high requirements for the entry of sellers, and Tongtuo is one of the early sellers. It is obviously much easier to open stores on Wal Mart as an American company.Therefore, the "client" has an opportunity.Li Yun, an insider, also reported that it is easy for Lotte Japan to have a situation similar to that of Tongtuo."Many Lotte sellers also use full sets of data from Japanese, which is very dangerous."Li Yun said that many Lotte sellers open stores in Lotte, and the first choice is to find a client in Japan, entrust the other party, and use its identity to open a company, including the collection account number and information.And thisEquity of the Company100%They are all owned by the Japanese client,It's easy to be cheated by the other party."At present, we will advise sellers not to look for Japanese partners, but to look for agents."According to Li Yun,Agent mode,The other party and its company are required to guarantee for the seller. However, on Lotte's platform, the store ownership will still show the Chinese company that belongs to the seller, and also the guarantee company.This model is recognized by Lotte, and the seller's risk is relatively small. At present, many domestic service companies have launched such services.However, according to Polaroid James, Lotte has opened its stores to Chinese sellers, even without an agent.But James also admitted that right nowThe access resident mode has very high requirements,I'm afraid the average seller can't reach it. Therefore, most people will still choose the agent mode officially recognized by Lotte.Either way,As long as it is not similar to the above Tongtuo and some Lotte sellers,It would not be a big problem to find a local citizen to start a company on a discretionary basis.▎Hurt of unclear boundaries: after the partners split up, delete the main link and sell it yourselfIn the Tongtuo incident, another problem needs to be noted, that is, there must be a clear line of rights and responsibilities between partners,There should be a reasonable restriction mechanism for the mobilization of the company's resources.If Xie Dan does not have the authority to change the collection account, or has a "shared management" mechanism for the collection account, the change can only be completed by multiple people working together, and the probability of the above events will be reduced a lot.Once the company's important resources are controlled by more than one person,And there is no effective means of restrictionIn this case, once differences arise, losses cannot be avoided.In addition, one of the reasons for the mutual injury between partners and collaborators is that when starting the project, the partners did not clearly define the ownership of interests and the division of interests at the time of withdrawal, which led to one or both parties harboring grievances and doing harm.A seller reported that he once talked to a friendPartner to open Amazon storesBoth of them have a set of registered materials. The seller's shop is older and has more inventory.When they split up, the sellers and friends got their own information and stores back.At this time, the seller found that,There are several main links that sell well in the store, which were deleted by the partner, and partners use their own links to sell these links.Now the seller's link has been deleted, and the partner's link has naturally become the main link.The other seller is a factory seller, which is transformed into Amazon. To this end, the seller has recruited a partner who is specially responsible for the operation. He only needs to provide products.One time when it was time to find a partner to solve a problem, I found that,The binding mailbox of its Amazon account was changed by the partner,But the seller was completely unaware.Such things are not uncommon.Therefore, before partnership, we should make sure that the interests of villains and mosquito legs are clear; Be a gentleman after partnership, and don't monopolize the interests of mosquito legs.Only in this way can the cooperation between the two sides last.More than three people have a struggle relationship, which is no exception in the cross-border e-commerce industry, especially in large companies.The chain of prices has encountered similar events.Gan Sentiment and his wife were unable to achieve gambling performance, which led to huge losses in the price chain. After the two fled overseas, the price chain was restructured in July 2020.According to Sun Hanshan, CEO of Price Chain, in August 2020, Gan and his wife took advantage of nepotism,Transfer all the stores under Price Chain and the inventory worth tens of millions.The reason why Gan Qingcang and his wife were able to implement "remote control" over the price chain is that at the beginning of the chain of Xunxing shares' purchase price, the price chain has reserved enough independent space.In order to actually control the chain of prices, Gan and his wife have placed their trusted followers in important posts within the chain of prices. For example, the executive vice president is always the "brother-in-law", and other vice president level management are "classmates, relatives and friends".The new team, represented by Sun Hanshan, has gradually cleaned up these nepotism since he took office in July, and will not completely control the price chain until December 2020.Of course, many listed companies do not understand the "playing method" of cross-border e-commerce. If they forcibly intervene in internal operations, they may become "laymen command insiders", which will lead to the loss of vitality of cross-border companies that originally developed well after being acquired.How to balance "decentralization" and "restraint" is a great test for listed companies.On the other hand, should small and medium-sized sellers fully trust and delegate power when facing "partners" and "co founders"? Or should there be certain mutually restrictive clauses?In the face of efficiency and risk, most people may prefer efficiency.In any case, cases such as the misappropriation of Tongtuo's funds have reminded the sellers:Decentralization system and restriction system, which can help sellers avoid many unknown risks.▎The seller's fund of 9 million yuan was misappropriated to buy a villa when the collecting company had an accidentSolving the partner problem internally does not mean that the small and medium-sized sellers' funds are safe.At present, most Amazon sellers collect money through third-party payment companies, because Amazon cannot directly transfer funds to domestic private accounts.In this case, Amazon needs to transfer the funds to a third-party collection company first, and then transfer them to a private person through the third-party collection company.Once the third-party collection company has problems, the seller's funds will also have problems.An insider fed back to the "blue ocean yiguan. com" domain news. com that in 2016, a well-known payment institution in the industry had a vicious incident in which employees embezzled customer funds without authorization due to lax management.According to the source, Mr. Huang, the manager of the Gateway Business Department of the organization, took advantage of his position to embezzle the funds of cross-border e-commerce sellers and customers as much as800-90010000 yuan,It is also used to purchase villas near Zhuhai University.After the incident, Mr. Huang repaid some of the misappropriated funds and was still sentenced to a heavy sentence.In 2019, Shenzhen * Pay Network Technology Co., Ltd., which is engaged in cross-border collection business, experienced a thunderstorm and its shareholders ran away with their money. In July, hundreds of sellers came to collect debts. By October, someone found that the company's office address had been "empty".China Business Daily reported that at the end of 2019, a well-known payment company was suspected of being involved in a fraud case and was frozen by the Hong Kong policeUS $18.2 millionFunds.Two fraud companies defrauded the victimUS $18.2 millionAfter the funds are remitted to the payment company, they are transferred to the private and corporate accounts of the fraudster through the payment company.The payment company, without knowing it, indirectly helped the fraudster to complete the fund transfer, which led to its own funds being frozen and affected the financing.Of course, these are all past events, which are also a lot of "lessons learned",Today's payment environment is also relativelyIt's a lot safer.Even so, payment companies are still affected by upstream partners from time to time.Payoneer, a payment giant, has to wipe the bottom for its partners.In June 2020, Wirecard AG, a payment company known as "European Alipay", filed for bankruptcy. As a partner of Payoneer in Europe, Wirecard "thunder storm" has brought great influence to Payoneer.Payoneer has to issue an emergency statement, saying that it only cooperates with Wirecard Bank AG, a subsidiary of Wirecard AG, and that the subsidiary is not in the bankruptcy filing sequence of Wirecard AG.Therefore, Payoneer's collection business in Europe is normal, so the seller should not worry too much. I wish all the sellers a prosperous season and a stable 2021. (Text/Blue Ocean Yiguan of cross-border e-commerce)
