My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 288

Tracking the vehicle made it easy to identify its owner. After all, once you track a vehicle, all you need is the license plate number, and the license plate number wasn’t far from Park Do-joon’s expectations.

“What’s this? A company name comes up?”

“Where is it?”

“It’s a company called N Gang Holdings.”

“N Gang Holdings?”

“Yes, what do they do? Construction?”

“A holding company is, simply put, a parent company.”

“A parent company?”

“Right, it’s a company created to manage other companies.”

For example, if there’s a company, a holding company is created that owns 80% of that company’s shares, and that holding company manages the company.

“It’s one of the methods business owners use to avoid losses.”

If there’s a company A, and its holding company is B, even if company A fails and goes bankrupt, the representative of company B, the holding company, doesn’t have to take responsibility, even if they lose their shares.

Because he’s only the representative of company B, and the business operations of company A are handled by the representative of company A.

“But that shouldn’t be allowed, right? It’s a holding company, isn’t it?”

“That’s the trick. A holding company just means it has a lot of shares, not that it manages the company. Hmm. This is getting complicated?”

“Why?”

“Using the name ‘Holdings’ implies a holding company, and if they’re using the name of a holding company, it means it’s a bigger operation than you think.”

You don’t run a few small shops under the name of Holdings.

“Moreover, if the vehicle is registered there, it’s a typical method of registering and operating it as a corporate vehicle.”

Park Do-joon checked N Gang Holdings. He clicked his tongue as he looked at its subsidiaries.

“It’s quite a big company. The total asset value must be over hundreds of billions [of Korean won, roughly equivalent to hundreds of millions of US dollars].”

“Really? That big?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a construction company in real estate, a very famous chain restaurant, and quite a large company specializing in corporate supplies.

It’s not big enough to be ranked in the top business conglomerates [chaebols], but it’s still one of the biggest companies in Korea.

“They have a lot of money. And they crave dominance. Wow, this is going to be a headache.”

The team leader, who happened to be passing by, came over and clicked his tongue as he looked at it.

“Can you catch them?”

The situation seemed so powerful that the team leader clicked his tongue just by hearing the name.

“I don’t think that’s the important thing, is it?”

“What’s important?”

“The important thing is whether we can save them.”

The important thing wasn’t the arrest but the rescue of the person being held, and the team leader and Lee Ji-soo couldn’t help but sigh deeply at that.

# User

N Gang Holdings.

A holding company with a total of four companies under it. The total asset size is 400 billion won [approximately 300 million US dollars], which is not a small company.

That’s because if a holding company’s assets are around 400 billion, the total assets of the companies below it far exceed trillions [of Korean won]. A holding company owns shares, not assets.

However, the assets of the companies below it are disposed of according to their decisions, so even if it’s said to be 400 billion, the assets will naturally increase if you consider the assets of the companies below it.

Park Do-joon suspects them, but he doesn’t move rashly. That’s because for a company like N Gang Holdings, covering up an incident with money isn’t difficult.

“The biggest problem is that we don’t know who drove the car.”

“Yes?”

Lee Ji-soo didn’t understand the words at first. But after Park Do-joon explained, she nodded in agreement.

“The vehicle is registered under the name of N Gang Holdings itself, not an individual. It’s common to have these luxury vehicles under the company’s name and drive them around.”

“But the number of people who can use it is limited, right?”

“In fact, it’s almost obvious. But that doesn’t mean it’s confirmed. From an investigative standpoint, the range is too wide.”

Realistically, the people who can use the vehicle are clearly the top executives of the company, the CEO and his family. In most cases, these sports cars are used in that way.

“But even that’s a wide range.”

There’s the CEO, his wife, and his children. You don’t even know if there’s one child or two.

“Moreover, strictly speaking, the vehicle belongs to the company.”

So anyone can use it. Of course, companies are supposed to keep records of who used the vehicle and when, but very few companies keep those records.

Even if they do, they can just destroy them if necessary.

“If the police investigate the vehicle, they will 100% delete the records.”

Even if they violate that, they’ll only pay a small fine, but if it’s connected to a crime, one of the children will be punished.

“The lawyer will argue that they don’t know who used the vehicle.”

“But there will be testimony, right?”

“Testimony? From who?”

“Ah, that’s right.”

The club said they were completely out of it. They said they had nothing to do with it. There’s no use asking for testimony in that situation.

“All we know is that the vehicle was used in a crime.”

“Ugh!”

Lee Ji-soo grabbed her head at Park Do-joon’s words.

“Of course, there’s a way. There’s no reason to focus only on the main culprit.”

“Yes?”

“The main culprit is probably one of the sons of the N Gang Holdings family. You said there are two sons, right?”

“Yes, Jo Gang-so and Jo Gang-hwa.”

“Then we need to find the one who’s practically neglected out of the two.”

“The neglected one?”

“We think these guys are projecting their dominance, right? N Gang Holdings is a big company. If they’re working at N Gang Holdings and wielding power, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to confirm their dominance, even if it’s not a girl.”

“Ah, I see.”

Basically, N Gang Holdings is a holding company. Given the nature of a holding company, they’ll be wielding absolute power over the companies below them, and on top of that, they’re the owner’s sons? Probably a single cough would be enough to make employees fall over themselves.

“Probably one of them has relatively less dominance.”

Of course, in that situation, there’s no reason to commit a crime to confirm their dominance. They’re already feeling it enough.

“Probably that person is likely to be out of the succession structure.”

“But we don’t know that well, do we?”

You can’t go to N Gang Holdings and ask, ‘Which of your two children is the black sheep?’

“There’s someone who knows that well, hehehe.”

“It must be Jo Gang-hwa.”

As expected, Jung I-yeon found out easily. After all, Moonlight is a corporate law firm, so it wasn’t difficult to access this information.

“Yes? Jo Gang-hwa? Not Jo Gang-so?”

Lee Ji-soo asked with a puzzled face when she heard that. That’s because Jo Gang-hwa is the eldest son and Jo Gang-so is the second son.

Considering that the second son is generally more likely to be rebellious, it was unusual.

“Yes.”

“Was the eldest son not good?”

“Well, according to rumors…”

The eldest son usually has to inherit the company, so they’re often trained very hard, and because they’re expected to, they often grow up to meet those expectations.

However, Jo Gang-hwa, the eldest son of N Gang Holdings, was a so-called hopeless case.

“I don’t know him personally, so I looked around, but it seems like he’s been causing all sorts of trouble since elementary school.”

“Since elementary school?”

“Yes.”

At least in elementary school, he was just beating up kids and his parents were called to school, but after becoming a middle school student, he started to get involved with bullies, and he managed to avoid punishment as a juvenile offender.

When he was a high school student, he covered up the incidents with lawyers and money.

“Well, there are people like that.”

No matter how well you educate them, and no matter how well you guide them, some people with terrible personalities are bound to go astray. Not psychopaths or anything like that, but people with truly messed up personalities, born wrong from the start.

“In contrast, Jo Gang-so is the complete opposite. He followed a steady, exemplary course. He went to a school called Erleton School in the United States. He graduated from New York College with a degree in economics.”

“Erleton School?”

“It’s a private high school in the United States.”

“I get the picture.”

Sending the second son to a private high school in the United States for education and having him attend college there means simply that they have expectations for the future. You can see that he was outstanding from a young age.

“And he’s working at the company now?”

“That’s right. Jo Gang-so is working at N Gang Holdings.”

“The successor has practically been decided.”

Then all that’s left is Jo Gang-hwa. And Jo Gang-hwa must have felt like he was losing dominance over his surroundings to his younger brother.

“I think I know what’s going on.”

“What?”

“Jo Gang-hwa wasn’t a psychopath or originally mentally ill. In fact, this case is closer to a failed parenting method.”

“Parenting method?”

“Not everyone is good at studying and has a quiet and calm personality.”

Even if that’s what the parents want. But when Park Do-joon looked at it, Jo Gang-hwa wasn’t that kind of person.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he’ll go astray no matter what.

“But things started to go wrong when his younger brother was born.”

When a younger sibling is born, all of the parents’ attention is focused on the younger sibling for a certain period of time. And in fact, in such cases, the first child is often jealous of the second child.

In a way, it’s a natural process, and the relationship between the two is established depending on what you do in the meantime.

“But when one side meets expectations too much, the other side is naturally alienated.”

“Ah, there’s that.”

At first, they might have treated him similarly. But compared to the academically gifted younger brother, the uncontrollable first child would naturally be disliked, and a kind of discrimination would gradually take place.

And the first child, who felt that, would go astray more and more.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone becomes a criminal.”

But in such cases, no one knows how the child’s future will change. In fact, one of the common characteristics of criminals is childhood abuse.

You might say, ‘How is discrimination child abuse?’ but emotional child abuse is also included in the realm of child abuse, and discrimination is one of the most dangerous types of emotional child abuse.

“Probably Jo Gang-hwa felt that people around him were ignoring him. He must have been quick-witted.”

The successor has practically been decided. So there’s no way the people around Jo Gang-hwa would treat him well. Jo Gang-so probably has the power to make or break careers in the company right now, but Jo Gang-hwa, on the other hand, has a strong image of being a loser or beyond help.

“Moreover, Korea tends to hold the eldest son more harshly accountable.”

Perhaps because of the Confucian culture, Korea tends to demand the responsibility of the eldest son very harshly. In fact, even in court, they acknowledge giving a certain amount of inheritance according to the responsibility of the eldest son.