Chapter 199: The Cheka

“Regarding some of the economic issues at the various external stations, I have written a memorandum based on the materials I have studied. Please have a look.” Yi Fan enthusiastically took out a document from his fake BOSS briefcase and handed it to [Ma Qianzhu][y005]. As a seasoned expert from Wudaokou, he had deeply researched the issues of power division between local and central authorities and the distribution of fiscal revenue.

[Ma Qianzhu][y005] took the document and casually handed it to his secretary, Hou Wenyong. “Comrade Yi Fan, your mission this time is very important. You must be extremely cautious.” He stood up and shook the hand of Yi Fan, who had hastily stood up. “Report to the organization in a timely manner if anything comes up.”

Yi Fan took his leave and exited the Executive Committee compound. He called for an official horse-drawn carriage to take him back to his office.

The Cheka’s offices were expanding along with the Senate’s government agencies and state-owned enterprises. It was now an organization with three hundred naturalized citizen staff members, occupying an entire three-story building.

The clatter of abacuses echoed in the hallways, and staff members carrying file boxes bustled through the corridors. Apart from the simpler conditions, the atmosphere here was just like an ordinary accounting firm in the old time-space.

He thought back to when he had started the organization with twenty hard-won naturalized citizen interns. He and a few other Elders like Jin Zhijiao had worked day and night teaching them how to use the abacus, read ledgers, and prepare audit reports. The first time they performed an audit for the Senate, they often had to redo the entire job because of the carelessness and “freelancing” of a few naturalized citizens. The dark days of endlessly fiddling with calculators and computers in a room piled high with paper still appeared in the nightmares of several Cheka Elders from time to time.

However, the Cheka’s affairs had become more and more regular recently. Most of the new staff had at least a primary school education, so at least the most basic things like using an abacus and the four arithmetic operations didn’t need to be taught. After the grain tax reform, many experienced household department clerks and grain tax collectors from the various county yamens were retained. Some of them went to the General Administration of Taxation, and the rest fell into the hands of the Cheka. These people were proficient in traditional bookkeeping and were well-versed in all the “tricks” involved. Because of this, Cheka staff had been repeatedly seconded to participate in inventorying “spoils of war” and conducting surprise inspections of the account books of native collaborators.

Yi Fan’s office was on the top floor, at the very top of the building. When the office was being set up, someone had reminded him that a top-floor office in Lingao’s subtropical environment would be extremely hot in the summer. Sikade’s office was a lesson. The roof of his office was at least made of original lightweight insulation wall materials from the old time-space. By the time it came to Yi Fan, there were only Lingao’s own manufactured insulation materials—insulation boards filled with kapok. The effectiveness of this stuff was naturally quite questionable.

To solve this problem, Mei Wan added a lookout platform on the roof of Yi Fan’s office, and then built a sunshade over the platform. Only then was the problem considered more or less solved.

Yi Fan wore a loose, ill-fitting tunic-style cotton jacket, similar to a Zhongshan suit. Because Lingao’s summers were too hot, he couldn’t wear a pair of riding boots, so the custom-made cotton breeches had to be omitted.

The windows of the office were all hung with bamboo curtains, blocking the scorching sunlight. To have enough light and save electricity, all offices in Lingao used large glass windows. This made them very hot in the summer. For this reason, a large wooden basin was placed in the middle of the office, containing a large block of ice that was emitting white mist. As soon as he sat down, Yi Fan’s female secretary brought him a chilled towel and herbal tea.

“Go and ask Director Jin to come.” Yi Fan wiped his face and neck with the towel. The towel had a faint jasmine scent. He glanced at the secretary. The secretary kept her eyes down and said nothing, a resentful look on her face. Only then did Yi Fan remember that he hadn’t “graced her with his presence” for a long time. This secretary was a life secretary he had bought from the maid school in the early days. Because he hadn’t drawn a good number, he had only bought a C-class one. Later, Yi Fan drew a good number and bought an A-class one at an auction. Thus, the originally unsatisfactory C-class old flame was sent by him to the administrative training class at Fangcaodi under the pretext of being “promising material,” and placed in the office as a secretary. Of course, from time to time, Comrade Yi Fan would still grace her with his presence for a change of pace.

He had wanted to offer a few words of comfort, but when he thought of the pile of things on his mind, he couldn’t be bothered to say anything.

A few minutes later, Jin Zhijiao arrived. She was wearing a “1634 Summer New Style Dress,” said to be a creation of the fashion club run by a few women from the Feiyun Society, currently only available for purchase by female Elders and the wives of Elders.

Yi Fan had always been wary of his deputy director, not because of her outstanding professional ability or ambition, but because her husband, Hu Muye, was an engineer at Lingao Telecom, specifically responsible for maintaining the telephone exchange in Bairen City, and was often active around the telephone exchange. It was well known that Elders mostly discussed work over the fixed-line telephone, and some important notices and reports were also conducted through the fixed-line telephone network. Yi Fan had a morbid suspicion that his conversations were being eavesdropped on by his deputy director’s husband.

“Zhijiao,” Yi Fan always addressed her in this seemingly affectionate tone, “I’m going to join the inspection team this time, and I’ll probably be away for a few months. I’m leaving the Cheka’s affairs to you.”

“You can rest assured,” Jin Zhijiao smiled with pursed lips. “The audit office building won’t collapse without you.”

Jin Zhijiao didn’t like the awkward full name: Special Audit Committee for Purging Corruption and Idleness, nor did she like the strange abbreviation “Cheka.” She always insisted on calling it the “Audit Office.” Although Yi Fan was always on guard against her, the two of them appeared quite close due to their frequent work contact.

“Hehe,” Yi Fan gave a dry laugh. “You know the work of our Cheka. It’s just one word: ‘annoying.’ And we don’t get any credit for it anywhere. It’s a job that offends people. With me gone, you’ll be under a lot of pressure for the next few months.”

“It’s no problem. We all work according to the orders of the Executive Committee. We’re all Elders, who’s afraid of whom,” Jin Zhijiao said nonchalantly. “But what about the cases handled by your Cheka? I don’t have a clue.”

Jin Zhijiao never got involved in specific cases of corruption among the naturalized citizens. The specific handling was the responsibility of the Fifth Division under the Cheka. The Fifth Division had no director and was directly led by Yi Fan. Even the Fifth Division’s office was not in this building, but in the adjacent courtyard.

“I called you here to talk about these things.” Yi Fan took a stack of folders from the file cabinet. “These are all the cases currently being handled by the Fifth Division. Most of the cases are already on track. You just have to wait for them to be concluded, give the final approval, and sign off, and they can be directly transferred to the Arbitration Tribunal for handling.”

“Okay.” Jin Zhijiao took the folders and flipped through them casually. More than a dozen departments were involved, and the amounts in question ranged from a few hundred to over a hundred thousand circulation coupons.

Currently, the Cheka’s standard for filing a case was an amount of two hundred circulation coupons or more. Smaller cases were directly handed over to the respective departments for disciplinary action and filing.

“Currently, the high-incidence areas for such cases are in administration and infrastructure.” Yi Fan said with little interest. “In administration, small sums of money are used frequently, and although there is an approval system, it sometimes becomes a formality. A little adds up to a lot. Administrative expenses are constantly rising. [Director Xiao][y001] talked to me about it last time, wanting us to come up with a few big cases to serve as a deterrent.”

“Come up with a few big cases?” Jin Zhijiao asked doubtfully.

“You know that many of the irregular expenses we find in administration now don’t even meet the standard for filing a case. A few pencils, a few notebooks, a case of kvass… they are all micro-amounts, and their whereabouts are completely untraceable, making investigation very difficult. Even if we force a few cases, they won’t have much impact.”

“So you want to kill a chicken to scare the monkeys.”

“That’s the idea, but this chicken is not easy to find.” Yi Fan rubbed his forehead. “If the position is too low, it’s meaningless. If the position is too high, it involves too many people…”

“You need to find a nest case,” Jin Zhijiao said calmly.

Yi Fan’s eyelids twitched. This woman was ruthless! This way, many small cases that didn’t meet the standard, and even actions that could only be considered disciplinary violations, could be combined and handled together.

“However, if we make it a nest case, the impact will be too great…”

Jin Zhijiao also fell silent. It wasn’t like a few years ago. The enterprise was large now, each department was a huge mess, and the personnel had expanded by several thousand percent. If they really uncovered a nest case, the result of arresting a large number of people would inevitably be the paralysis of an entire department.

Lingao under the rule of the Senate was not 21st-century China, where university students vying for civil service and public institution jobs were everywhere. Every administrative staff member had at least half a year of training. If one was arrested, it would take a long time to fill the vacancy.

Moreover, according to the Senate’s “purity” requirements, once arrested, it was no longer possible to return to an administrative agency. This meant that the administrative personnel trained with great effort would be wasted.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Yi Fan directly changed the subject: “Then there’s the matter of the construction sector. The issues here are huge, and I’m afraid the amount of money involved is not small.” He pulled out a memorandum. “This is a survey memorandum on the civilian naturalized citizen resettlement housing for the past year…”

“These projects were all undertaken by the Lingao General Construction Company…” Jin Zhijiao gasped. Currently, Lingao had no private construction companies. All construction projects were contracted by this general company. “Are you saying there are problems with the contracting and procurement?”

“That’s inevitable.” Yi Fan nodded. “With such a large infrastructure mess, I just took a casual walk, and a small construction site has several contract foremen: for digging earth, transporting sand, breaking stones… With so many subcontracted projects, how can there not be problems?”