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$250K in cash during 2005 burglary
Universal Group Development Inc. (Saipan), a company that is suing a bank and its former president for allegedly blocking the firm from gaining access to $225,000 of its own funds from a business savings account, used to run a store that was burglarized and some $250,000 in cash was stolen.
According to police records, the now defunct Hailan Store located along Chalan Pale Arnold in Chalan Lau Lau was burglarized and the cash representing the store’s cash collections for the past three days was stolen in July 2005.
The cash was reportedly in the store’s safe.
Police said the store was equipped with surveillance cameras but the equipment’s wires had been cut.
It was Wang Fen Fu, a store control clerk, who discovered the money missing from the safe when he went inside his office to validate cash collections.
The incident was reportedly the biggest heist in the CNMI in many years.
The Department of Public Safety’s Thief Apprehension Select Coalition led the investigation into the burglary but the case remains unsolved.
Aside from Hailan Market, Universal Group also used to operate the now defunct Oriental Dumpling Restaurant in Chalan Lau Lau.
Universal Group, through counsel Samuel Mok, is suing its former president and shareholder, Wangzhong Yu, for conversion and the First Hawaiian Bank for breach of contract.
Mok disclosed that Yu was arrested in China when he traveled to that country in 2013 for embezzlement and theft, among other charges.
Yu, however, maintains that he is still president of Universal Group and that he was detained in China for 22 months, under conditions amounting to torture, caused by political influence exerted by his former business partners.
Saying it is a mere stakeholder, First Hawaiian Bank has asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI to allow it to deposit with the clerk of court $224,558.71 in a savings account that is being disputed by Universal Group’s shareholders.
In its cross-claim, the bank named as cross-defendants Yu, Mingnan Jin, and Jinwei Guo.
Jin and Guo are claiming that they are the officers and directors of Universal Group, and that Guo is now the sole shareholder.
