Guyu Finance | Former employee reports Zong Fuli’s embezzlement of Wahaha Group’s huge assets

Recently, a screenshot of a report against Zong Fuli has been circulating online, sparking speculation about the fate of Zong Fuli and Wahaha.
After Zong Qinghou’s death, Zong Fuli inherited the management rights of the Wahaha Group. As Zong Qinghou’s successor, Zong Fuli seems to lack Zong Qinghou’s management methods and level, to the point that a former Wahaha Group employee publicly posted online, pointing out four problems with Zong Fuli. These include misappropriating a large amount of state-owned assets from the Wahaha Group, forcing Wahaha veterans to resign, and replacing them with her own people, etc.

See the picture below:
The employee said that he has sent the report content and evidence to the Discipline Inspection Commission’s inspection team, the Zhejiang State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and other relevant departments through letters. Whether it is right or wrong may need to wait until the investigation results come out before we can know.

I am a former employee of Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., Ltd., and I am now publicly reporting Zong Fuli, the president of Hangzhou Hongsheng Group. After the death of Chairman Zong Qinghou, she inherited the management rights of the Wahaha Group, and it has been more than 100 days since then. She has used her father’s social influence to create a perfect image of a successor and a successful businesswoman for herself, and she has firmly grasped control of the Wahaha Group through creating public opinion and using various means.

Hongsheng Group is a wholly-owned Sino-foreign joint venture of Zong Fuli. Before the death of the old Zong, it has always been a processing plant for the Wahaha Group. Starting from the end of January this year when the old Zong was seriously ill, Zong Fuli, under the pretext of unified management, used her power to exclude and marginalize the old ministers who had fought for the Wahaha Group for many years under her father, as well as the management of the Wahaha Group. She adjusted the factory directors and general managers of the management areas of the Wahaha Group, recruited the management of Hongsheng Group into the Wahaha Group, and replaced all the original factory management personnel. After the death of the old Zong, Zong Fuli began to accelerate the replacement of personnel, making large-scale adjustments to the heads of key departments such as the production center, sales company, finance department, and supply department of the Wahaha Group, and even replaced the person in charge of the Wahaha Group’s Party Committee. In order to avoid providing legal economic compensation to the old employees of the Wahaha Group, she used various means to pressure and coerce management cadres at all levels to resign. In just three months, most of the middle-level cadres of the Wahaha Group were forced to leave their jobs. The purpose of these actions is to make all the personnel in important positions of the Wahaha Group 100% obey her personal will, so as to completely break the rules and regulations established by the old Zong over the past few decades, so as to smoothly embezzle state-owned assets. In these 100-plus days, she has continuously transferred benefits to her Hongsheng Group through various means, hollowing out the profits that should have belonged to the state-owned Wahaha Group, occupying a large amount of funds, and wantonly misappropriating state-owned assets.

After the death of the old Zong, all the social and educational donation projects that the Wahaha Group had insisted on for decades were stopped, which completely violated the original intention of Chairman Zong Qinghou to fulfill the social responsibility of the enterprise when he was alive, as well as the Wahaha Group’s creation of social and economic benefits for the country, all shareholders, and employees.

After the death of the old Zong on February 25, 2024, Zong Fuli, in terms of business, transferred orders, transferred profits, and even transferred assets to her own Hongsheng Group through various means, in order to achieve the purpose of embezzling state-owned assets from the Wahaha Group, which was originally state-owned:

1. After the death of the old Zong, Zong Fuli, in the name of Hongsheng Group, commissioned external processing factories to process Wahaha purified water with the brand name, and then sold it to the Wahaha Group sales company, while the state-owned Wahaha Group is the only company that has the right to outsource the processing of Wahaha brand products. Therefore, Hongsheng Group directly outsources production, which not only seriously infringes the rights and interests of the Wahaha Group, but also illegally encroaches on the profits of the Wahaha Group by making profits from it.

2. In late March, Zong Fuli decided that Hongsheng Group and a foreign investment company would jointly invest in building a factory, planning to purchase 18 water production lines, with an investment of about 1.2 billion yuan and an estimated annual output value of nearly 10 billion yuan, in order to completely transfer the orders and profits of the original water product business of the state-owned Wahaha Group. What is even more serious is that the investment funds for these 18 water lines are still provided by the state-owned Wahaha Group company. This is only the first step in transferring assets.

3. Adjustment of Wahaha Group’s procurement path. Wahaha Group originally adopted a unified procurement and sales model. Zong Fuli added Hongsheng Trading Company to the procurement system, unreasonably increasing the prices of raw materials, labels, and even bottle caps, to steal the profits that should have belonged to the Wahaha Group’s factories, all of which are state-owned.

4. After the death of the old Zong, Zong Fuli transferred the orders of the Wahaha Group’s main profitable products, such as eight-treasure porridge, to the factories of Hongsheng Group, giving priority to meeting the production of Hongsheng Group and increasing its operating rate, which seriously affected the operating rate and profits of the state-owned Wahaha Group’s factories.

The old Zong dedicated his life to the Wahaha Group. With the help and care of the Party and the governments at all levels in Hangzhou, the Wahaha Group has become the leading enterprise in the national beverage industry. The old Zong himself has always adhered to the principle of operating and managing the company in accordance with the law. The evidence of the above content has been sent to the Discipline Inspection Commission’s inspection team, the Zhejiang Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, the Hangzhou Municipal State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, the Shangcheng District Government, and the Shangcheng District Culture, Commerce, and Tourism Group through letters. We hope that the government will investigate Zong Fuli’s illegal embezzlement, transfer, and damage to state-owned assets as soon as possible to ensure that the Wahaha Group can operate steadily and ensure the safety of state-owned assets.