How many "gold medals" are needed to expose Zhou Yahui's true colors?

Since the "20CM" plunge on June 21, will the many mysteries surrounding Kunlun Wanwei and its actual controller Zhou Yahui, especially the true identity of Zhou Yahui himself, begin to be revealed one by one?

Among the more than 5,000 A-share listed companies, there are not many that cause regulatory authorities so much worry, but Zhou Yahui and Kunlun Wanwei are definitely one of them.

Few people can remember how many inquiry letters and concern letters Zhou Yahui's Kunlun Wanwei has received from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since it was listed on the A-share market in 2015. This is because since Kunlun Wanwei was listed, the company and its actual controller, Zhou Yahui, have been questioned.

As for the post-event analysis of what caused Kunlun Wanwei's "20CM" plunge, let's first take a look at the sharp comments from netizens on Snowball:

In 2016, in order to reasonably reduce his holdings, Zhou Yahui, chairman of Kunlun Wanwei, divorced his ex-wife Li Qiong and divided his property. Li Qiong obtained 70.54 million shares of the company.

The current reduction of holdings and lending money to the company is the same tactic that Accountant Jia used on LeTV: upgrading the ownership of the company and converting equity into debt, so that when the company is liquidated, the priority of getting the funds back is higher, making it easier to lock in the cash-out results.

As for the 2.5% interest, what is Kunlun Wanwei's dividend rate? 0.4%, which one is more cost-effective is obvious at a glance.

By reducing holdings to cash out and then lending it back to the company for a fee, you not only get funds but also earn higher interest and upgrade your rights and interests in the company. It's like killing three birds with one stone, great!

And this method has a greater advantage: Kunlun Wanwei has many companies overseas, including Opera, StarMaker, and SigularityAI, which it acquired a few days ago. Kunlun Wanwei can transfer funds legally overseas through related transactions, thereby avoiding foreign exchange controls and successfully making a profit.

Li Qiong has waited for seven years for this moment. How many seven years are there in a lifetime? If not now, when? The times will eventually reward the brave with generous rewards, of course, with the shareholders' money.

This spirit of draining the company's assets by sucking the marrow out of its bones reflects the chairman and his ex-wife's meticulous and dedicated attitude. They are a model in the industry and are worthy of our study. Please take a closer look~

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However, despite so many doubts and numerous "gold medal orders" from regulatory agencies in recent years, Zhou Yahui has not been able to "expose his true colors". Today, Zhou Yahui is still undefeated, and many fans still respect him as one of the few investment and entrepreneurship tycoons in China and worship him deeply.

Now, in 2023, when everyone is suffering, Zhou Yahui has won again. Kunlun Wanwei's stock price has soared nearly 6 times in a few months. Not only has Zhou Yahui and his good ex-wife Li Qiong's net worth soared, but Li Qiong will soon be able to cash out a large amount of shares she sold and put them in her pocket.

Since March this year, Kunlun Wanwei has received four consecutive letters of concern from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange due to its stock price surge and various abnormal behaviors, and has been repeatedly questioned whether there is insider trading. Can Zhou Yahui still remain unscathed in the face of the regulatory "gold medal order" this time?

Let’s first take a look at the two recent “gold medals” of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

On June 21, Kunlun Wanwei announced a letter of concern from shareholder Li Qiong following his share reduction plan:

Looking at the picture above, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange was very blunt in its words in this letter of concern, directly asking Kunlun Wanwei "whether there is any situation of using insider information to trade." Because Li Qiong's identity is not ordinary, she is not only the company's second largest shareholder, but also the ex-wife of the actual controller Zhou Yahui. She and Zhou Yahui have been childhood sweethearts. With Kunlun Wanwei's stock price rising nearly 6 times in a short period of time, the possibility of Zhou Yahui reducing his holdings through "divorce-style" is highly suspicious.

On June 15, after Kunlun Wanwei announced that its holding subsidiary Star Group would acquire all the shares of Singularity AI for US$160 million, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued another letter of concern:

In its June 15 letter of concern, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange also expressed doubts about whether there was "insider trading" in Kunlun Wanwei's acquisition of Singularity AI for US$160 million, and the wording was equally blunt.

Analysts believe that the reason why the Shenzhen Stock Exchange used such impolite words is that Zhou Yahui revealed too many suspicious points:

1. Wang Liwei, the actual controller of Singularity AI, was Zhou Yahui's entrepreneurial partner for more than 10 years. He was also the former chairman and general manager of Kunlun Wanwei. Wang Liwei started working at Kunlun Wanwei in 2008 and left to start his own business in 2020. Could it be that a younger brother who had followed Zhou Yahui for 15 years was Zhou Yahui's white glove for profit transfer in the name of acquisition? It is highly doubtful.

2. Previously, Kunlun Wanwei claimed that it had reached a comprehensive technical strategic cooperation with Singularity Intelligence on AIGC technology fields such as ChatGPT, launched the joint development of ChatGPT, and announced that it would soon launch the double-hundred-billion-level large language model "Tiangong" 3.5 benchmarked against ChatGPT. The question is, how many people really believe that Singularity Intelligence has this strength? Is it worth the price?

Two days ago, Yao Jianguo, Dean of the School of Software at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said at the NetEase Summer Forum that China’s existing large models are not true ChatGPT basic large models, and the technical difficulty of making basic large models is quite high.

Take Beijing Singularity Intelligence Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Singularity"), which is controlled by Singularity AI, as an example. This company has only tens of millions of R&D funds, few R&D results, and only one software copyright registered in February 2023. According to the asset appraisal report (consolidated basis):

As of March 31, 2023, Beijing Qidian's total assets were 4.5597 million yuan, total liabilities were 39.1722 million yuan, and net assets were -34.6125 million yuan. After market valuation, the total equity value of Beijing Qidian was 1.714 billion yuan, and the assessed value-added was as high as 1.748 billion yuan! It's outrageous.

Let's look at the "painted skin" revealed by the media Yicai Global: Beijing Singularity Intelligence Technology Co., Ltd., which jointly developed the Tiangong 3.5 model with Kunlun Wanwei, has been established for just over two years, and its paid-in capital is questionable, with 0 insured persons and only three main personnel. However, it has obtained equipment procurement and supply of 300 million yuan from Kunlun Wanwei. At the same time, Beijing Singularity Intelligence's main business and establishment years do not match Kunlun Wanwei's description of it.

At the same time, judging from the timeline of Kunlun Wanwei's reply announcement, "Tiangong" 3.5 may be the "Chinese version of ChatGPT-like product" developed by Kunlun Wanwei. However, Kunlun Wanwei took less than 5 months to develop "Tiangong" 3.5, and the qualifications of the development partner are unclear.

3. Zhou Yahui himself and the Xinyu Canjin Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership) controlled by Zhou Yahui were once shareholders of Beijing Singularity, so there is a possibility of insider trading in this acquisition.

Looking at the above picture, on January 24, 2022, Singularity Intelligence added a natural person shareholder Zhou Yahui, and a new corporate legal person Xinyu Canjin Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership). The latter's major shareholder is also Zhou Yahui, holding 96.77% of the shares.

On November 3, 2022, Zhou Yahui and Xinyu Canjin Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership) simultaneously withdrew from Beijing Singularity. As for why Zhou Yahui and Xinyu Canjin Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership), which he actually controlled, withdrew at this time?

Analysts told Rhodium Gun that this was most likely because Zhou Yahui had learned a lesson from the sensational "ICST project fraud" incident in 2019, so this time Zhou Yahui chose to retreat early in order to avoid suspicion.

In early 2019, an article about ICST project fraud directly pointed out that Zhou Yahui, the actual controller of Kunlun Wanwei, was "fraudulent" and said: "Zhou Yahui is just one of those scammers who are ALL in blockchain."

The article alleges:

During 2018, Zhou Yahui disregarded his commercial credit, betrayed the commercial commitment of StarMaker (actually controlled by Zhou Yahui and later acquired by Kunlun Wanwei) to tokenize its assets, delayed the commercial application of the ICST blockchain protocol on StarMaker, and refused to repurchase ICST with the quarterly net profit of the StarMaker platform. Even more shameful is that the ICST project team repeatedly released false positive news to induce investors to enter the market and conspired with Ledger Capital personnel to cash out, making huge illegal profits.

On November 6, 2018, Zhou Yahui concealed the fact that StarMaker had already carried out asset tokenization and ICO financing, and sold part of the StarMaker assets that originally belonged to ICST token holders to Opera (a subsidiary of Kunlun Wanwei) in the form of defective equity through related transactions within the same actual controller, illegally transferring $30 million of the listed company's funds to its actual controller Zhou Yahui. Zhou Yahui's double sale of StarMaker constituted both a fundamental breach of contract to ICST investors and a serious fraud against Opera investors;

In the ICST fraud incident, which caused huge losses to investors, Zhou Yahui, as the main investor of the ICST project, was also accused of being the actual controller and ultimate beneficiary behind the ICST platform. The whistleblower also accused Zhou Yahui of arranging Bai Shuo, a former assistant in the president's office of Kunlun Wanwei, to be the co-founder of the ICST project, but in fact he was Zhou Yahui's white glove.

Before and after the outbreak of this "fraud scandal", the founder and CEO of the ICST platform was arrested by the FBI on suspicion of fraud, while Bai Shuo, another co-founder of the ICST platform, was accused by investors as one of the main responsible persons in this rights protection incident, and the financial backer behind Bai Shuo was directly pointed at Zhou Yahui.

In response to the above allegations, Kunlun Wanwei called them "pure defamation" and said it was taking legal action.

However, perhaps Zhou Yahui sensed the risk after the ICST "fraud storm" broke out. At that time, during the brief period when the ICST blockchain project's official website was restored to access, the relevant webpage information about Zhou Yahui as the main investor of the ICST project was quickly deleted.

Maybe Zhou Yahui wanted to disappear, but it was too late now. The original official website information had been preserved and notarized by the rights defenders.

Although the sensational "fraud scandal" ultimately failed to damage Zhou Yahui's reputation, it obviously had a huge impact on him. As mentioned above, an analyst told Rhodium Gun that before Kunlun Wanwei acquired Singularity AI, Zhou Yahui and Xinyu Canjin, which he actually controlled, withdrew from the list of shareholders of Beijing Singularity several months in advance in an attempt to avoid regulatory investigations.

However, analysts believe that, similar to the ICST "fraud scandal" that broke out in 2019, Zhou Yahui has revealed too many suspicious points this time: in the series of events including the surge in Kunlun Wanwei's stock price, the planning and launch of the Tiangong 3.5 large model, the acquisition of Singularity AI, and the large-scale reduction of holdings by his ex-wife Li Qiong, Zhou Yahui's figure and the possible existence of his white gloves are looming, and there are many doubts.

Analysts further stated that in the past, Zhou Yahui was accused of using white gloves to transfer money from one hand to the other. This time, it is not ruled out that Zhou Yahui used Hong Kong accounts and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect to speculate and manipulate his own stocks for profit. Because Hong Kong's funding sources and supervision are relatively diverse and relaxed, Kunlun Wanwei has acquired many overseas companies and also has companies in Hong Kong, so Zhou Yahui has these convenient conditions.

According to the 2022 financial report, Kunlun Wanwei achieved operating income of 4.736 billion yuan, of which overseas business income accounted for as high as 78%, about 3.7 billion yuan. It is worth noting that in April this year, the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA) also interviewed two accounting firms in writing, specifically reminding listed companies with a high proportion of overseas business to conduct annual audits.

At the same time, foreign capital from the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect played an important role in Kunlun Wanwei's surge.

On January 30, 2023, when Kunlun Wanwei's stock price jumped up and opened, foreign investors bought about 1.95 million shares. The total number of foreign shares held on that day was about 19.59 million shares, and the shareholding ratio on that day was about 1.82%:

On June 21, when Kunlun Wanwei's stock price plummeted 20CM from a high of 58.91 yuan, foreign investors still bought more than 2.5 million shares that day. The total number of foreign shares held on that day exceeded 49.46 million shares, and the shareholding ratio on that day was as high as 4.55%:

"Therefore, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange has issued four letters of concern since March this year. There is a basis and a deep meaning behind them," the analyst said. "Of course, if we want to confirm or rule out the existence of insider trading, a letter of concern alone is far from enough. We hope that the regulatory authorities can conduct further in-depth investigations."

The last time Zhou Yahui went “ALL in blockchain”, it caused a “fraud storm” that shocked the outside world. What will “ALL in AI” bring to Zhou Yahui this time?

In any case, the market and investors need an explanation after Kunlun Wanwei's stock price suddenly plummeted by "20CM" due to the suspense surrounding a series of events such as the nearly 6-fold surge in the stock price in just a few months, the Tiangong 3.5 large model, the acquisition of Singularity AI, and Li Qiong's large-scale share reduction, as well as Zhou Yahui's suspicious past.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.