Unlock the Editor’s Digest totally free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.
Reuters has published a fun story in the present day 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 mentioned 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 government roles in a number of companies and who’s below investigation in Britain for cash laundering, in accordance with that nation’s Nationwide Crime Company and a doc filed in an immigration case at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.
A gaggle known as Aqua Labs Funding LLC instructed Reuters the $100mn buy “was a business determination 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 search out out extra. Our tumble down this explicit rabbit gap ended with an surprising thud on some hardwood flooring.
Firms 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.
The entire UK entities listed have since been dissolved. Anbo Business, 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 working, nevertheless. It describes how the group was based by “nicely revered timber producer” Zhou Senior in Shanghai in 1989. Exports to the US started in 1991. Bobby Zhou ultimately 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 mentioned the merger would concurrently “assist the enlargement 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 not predict demand for the merchandise . . .
Between January and November 2017 the Firm [Anbo International] averaged gross sales of roughly £523k per thirty days. Within the latter interval, December 2017 to March 2018, common gross sales have been roughly £94k per thirty days
In response to the web site, listed here are some issues that subsequently occurred at Anbo:
On this context, Zhou’s $100mn WLFI funding seems like a fairly pure growth.
Additional flooring:
— How an alleged ex-gang member is tied to royal carpet maker Victoria
